Game and Match : Sakuno?
by xXRottWeilerXx
Summary: Last chapter and an epilogue up: He had battled the most important match in his life, and he lost. But it didn't bother him much, because Sakuno was on the winning side. And she would always be. Warning: contents bordering M.
1. Prologue

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: Hi, there. I've been writing RyoSaku fanfics for a while now but I've never got the chance to publish them cuz I've been quite busy with my finals and assignments from my lecturers to even sign up as an author for . Now that I'm (quite) free, I'll hope you guys will enjoy my debut.**

**Rating: T+ (is there even this rating?) Due to foul words and some sexual scenes. Not quite M-rated.**

**#########**

**SUMMARY**

Ryuzaki Sakuno needs a break. After evolving from a shy, clumsy, timid and stuttering girl to a witty young woman who has the balls – no, ovaries- to tell a jerk to go bitch himself rather than picking on her, she felt good. Well, that was before her grandmother died when she turned 17. Now at 30, she's out of money,out of love and the closest she's come near to her dream of being a serious reporter is by writing the scandalous column for her voluptuous alter ego, "Sweet Sakura". So when Sakuno lands a job reporting on tennis team the Tokyo Dragons – in particular their star player and captain, gorgeous Echizen Ryoma – she thinks this is her big chance. Hot-shot Ryoma has no intention of letting an uptight reporter like Sakuno dig into his past. But he's about to discover a whole lot more to Sakuno than meets the eye…

**Prologue**

_**The Life of Sweet Sakura**_

_Of all the smoky bars in Tokyo, he had to walk into the Loose Frog, the dive where I worked five nights a week pulling beer and choking on secondhand smoke. A careless lock of black hair fell across his forehead as he pulled a bar stool and sat on it._

"_Give me a Guinness'," he said, his voice as rough as velveteen, "and put a hustle on it, babe. I don't have all day."_

_I've always been a sucker for men with dark hair and bad attitudes. One look and I knew this man was as dark and as bad as a stallion. "Bottle or draft?" I asked._

_He lit a cigarette and looked at me through a cloud of smoke. His heavenly green eyes were packed with sin as his gaze lowered to the front of my tank top. One corner of his mouth kicked up in appreciation of my thirty-four D's. "Bottle," he answered._

_I grabbed a Guinness' from the cooler, popped the cap, and slid it across the bar. "Three fifty."_

"_What's your name?" he asked and reached into the back pocket of his worn Levi's to pull out his wallet._

"_Sakura," I answered. "Sweet Sakura."_

_The other corner of his full mouth lifted as he handed me a five. "Are you a stripper?" I get that a lot. "That depends."_

"_On what?"_

"_On what you have in mind," I answered, then folded my arms on the bar and leaned forward, giving him a nice view of my cleavage, his eyes hot and…_

The telephone next to Ryuzaki Sakuno's computer rang, pulling her attention away from the screen and out of the latest installment of _The Life Of Sweet Sakura._ "Damn," she swore. She pushed her fingers beneath her glasses and scrubbed her tired eyes. From between her fingers she glanced at the caller ID and picked up.

"Ryuzaki," the managing editor at the _Tokyo's_, Takeyama Hiroshi, began without bothering to say hello, "Kevin Schneider is talking to the coaches and general manager tonight. The job is officially yours."

Kevin Schneider's corporation was a member of the Legendary 500 and he was the owner of the Tokyo Dragons tennis team. "When do I start?" Sakuno asked and rose to her feet. She reached for her coffee and spilled a drop on her old flannel pajamas as she brought the cup to her lips.

"January first."

January first gave her only two weeks to prepare. Two days ago, Sakuno had been approached by Takeyama and asked if she was interested in covering for sports-beat reporter Dan Taichi while he underwent treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The prognosis for Dan was good, but his leave of absence left the paper in need of someone to cover the Tokyo Dragons tennis team. Sakuno never dreamed that someone would be her. Among other things, she was a feature writer for the _Tokyo's_ and was known for her monthly _Single Soul in Tokyo_ columns. She didn't know a thing about tennis.

"You'll hit the road with them on the second," Takeyama continued. "Schneider wants to smooth over the details with the coaches, then he'll introduce you to the team the Monday before you leave."

When she'd first been offered the job last week, she'd been shocked and more than a little puzzled. Surely Mr. Schneider would want another sports reporter to cover the games. But as it turned out, the offer had been the team owner's idea.

"What will the coaches think?" She set the mug on her desk, next to an open day planner with various colors of sticky notes stuck all over it.

"Doesn't really matter. Ever since Echizen Nanjiroh and Sanada Genichirou retired, that arena hasn't seen a capacity crowd. Schneider needs to pay for that hotshot captain he bought last year. Schneider loves tennis, but he's a businessman first and foremost. He'll do what it takes to get the fans in those seats. Which is why he thought of you in the first place. He wants to attract more female fans to the game."

What Takeyama Hiroshi didn't say was that Schneider had thought of her because he thought she wrote fluff for women. Which was okay with Sakuno; fluff helped pay her bills and was wildly popular with women who read the _Tokyo's_. But fluff didn't pay all the bills. Not even close. Hentai magazines paid most of them. And the hentai serials, _The Life Of Sweet Sakura_, she wrote for _Him _magazine were wildly popular with males.

As Takeyama talked about Schneider and his tennis team, Sakuno picked up a pen and wrote on a pink sticky note_: Buy books on tennis._ She tore the note from the top of the block, flipped a page, and stuck it in her day planner beneath several other strips of paper. "…. and you have to remember you're dealing with tennis players. You know they can be real superstitious. If the Dragons start losing matches, you'll get blamed and sent packing."

Great. Her job was in the hands of superstitious jocks. She tore an old note marked _Sweet Sakura deadline_ from the planner and tossed it in the trash. After a few more minutes of conversation, she hung up the telephone and picked up her coffee. Like most Tokyo bumpkins, she couldn't help but know the names and some of the faces of the tennis players. The season was long and tennis was mentioned on _Nippon-5 News _most nights, but she'd actually only met one of the Dragons, the captain Takeyama had mentioned, Echizen Ryoma.

She'd been introduced to the man with the thirty-three-million-dollar contract at a Press Club party just after his recruitment into the Dragons last summer. He'd stood in the middle of the room looking healthy and fit, like a king holding court. He was quite the average height of Japanese men, about six-five, but he was pure muscle. His raven hair covered his ears and the collar of his shirt, slightly windblown and finger-combed.

She and the tennis player had exchanged hellos and a handshake. His amber eyes had hardly fallen on her before he'd moved on with the blonde sticking by his side like a suction cup. In less than a second, she'd been found lacking and dismissed. But she was used to it. Men like Ryoma usually didn't pay much attention to women like Sakuno. At five-eleven with dark brown orbs, shoulder length dark brown hair and an a size thirty four A-cup. They didn't stick around to hear if she had anything interesting to say.

If other Dragons dismissed her as quickly as Echizen Ryoma had, she was in for an aggravating few months, but travelling with the team was too good an opportunity to pass up. She would write her articles about the sports from a woman's point of view. She would report on the highlights of the game as expected. She also wanted to know if women still encountered discrimination in the twenty-first century.

**######**

**Fin.**

**A/N: Okay, I know for some of you this plot seems familiar 'cuz I adapted this story based on Rachel Gibson's 'See Jane Score'. But this story won't be 100 percent xeroxed from the book, 'cuz there will be alterations. Maybe not now, but there will be. :)  
**


	2. Ch1: Rookie Initiation

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**#1: Rookie Initiation**

The locker room was thick with trash talk as Echizen 'Lucky' Ryoma tied his laces and slapped on his trademark white cap. Most of his teammates stood around Bobby Chin, the rookie Chinese guy, giving him his choice of initiations. He could either let the guys shave his hair into a Mohawk or take the whole team out to dinner. Since rookie dinners cost between 350 thousand to 500 thousand yens, Ryoma figured the young Singles player was going to end up looking like a punker for a while. Bobby's wide onyx eyes searched the locker room for a sign that the guys were kidding him. He found none. They'd all been rookies once, and every one of them had endured hazing of some sort. In Ryoma's rookie season, his sort of initiation was tattooed on his belly. A horseshoe tattoo of all the things in this world.

Ryoma grabbed his red lucky racket and headed into the tunnel. He passed some of the guys working with the gutter strings of their rackets. Near the front of the tunnel Coach Tezuka Kunimitsu and General Manager Inui Sadaharu stood talking to a short woman dressed completely in black. Both men had their arms folded across their chests, and they scowled down at the woman – if they were even capable of showing any other emotions on those stoic faces of them – as she spoke to the two men. Her auburn hair was scraped to the back of her head and held in one of those scrunchy things his sister wore.

Beyond mild curiosity, Ryoma paid her little attention and forgot her completely as he hit the court for practice. He listened for the resounding thwack that he'd come to expect from spending an hour perfecting his hits as the tennis ball hit the wall of the indoor stadium. Cool winter air that seeped into the stadium through overhead air vents brushed his cheeks and filled his lungs as he made several laps. Like all Singles player, he was a member of the team, yet set apart by the solitary nature of his job. There was no covering for men like him. When they let the opponent score, the umpire would announce on the top of his lungs of the missed ball, and it took more than intense determination and guts to face the net game after game. It took a man who was competitive and arrogant enough to believe himself invincible. Like him.

His coach, Echizen Nanjiroh, pushed a basket of tennis balls into the court. Ryoma would do what he'd been performing for the past fifteen years, be it game nights or practice. He tapped the head of the racket onto both of his shoulders, adjusted his cap and took his stance. Then he locked his gaze on Nanjiroh, who was smirking like a gay across the other side of the net, and for the next thirty minutes the coach shot super fast balls like a sniper and firing from blind spots.

At the age of thirty, Ryoma felt good. Good about the game, and good about his physical condition. Relatively pain-free now, he took drugs no stronger than Advil. He was having the best season of his career, and heading into the conference finals, his body was in excellent condition. His professional life couldn't be any better. There were those who'd written him off. Put a period on his career. Two years ago while playing for the Kansai Bulls, he'd blown out both his knees. After several major reconstructive surgeries, countless hours of rehab and a trade to the Tokyo Dragons, Ryoma was back and playing better than ever. This season he had something to prove. To himself. To those who'd crossed him off. He'd recaptured the qualities that had always made him one of the best. Ryoma had an uncanny tennis sense and could see a play a second before it happened, and if he couldn't stop it with his quick reflexes, he always had brute strength and a mean hook in reserve.

After he finished practice, Ryoma took off his cap and moved to the training room. He did forty-five minutes on the exercise bike before switching to the free weighs. For an hour and a half, he worked his arms, chest and abdomen. The muscles of his legs and back burned and sweat rolled down his temples as he breathed through the pain. He took a long shower, wrapped a towel around his waist, then headed to the locker room. The rest of the guys were there, sprawled out on the chairs and benches listening to something Inui was saying. Kevin Schneider was in the middle of the room too, and began talking about ticket sales. Ryoma figured that ticket sales wasn't his job. His concern was to make saves and win games. So far, he was doing his job.

Ryoma leaned one bare shoulder into the doorframe. He crossed his arms over his chest, and his gaze lowered to the short woman he'd seen earlier. She stood next to Schneider, and Ryoma studied her. She was one of those natural women who didn't wear a touch of makeup. The two slashes of her dark brows were the only color on her pale face. Her jacket and black slack pants were shapeless, hiding even a hint of curves. On one shoulder hung a leather briefcase, and in her hand she held a to-go cup of Starbucks. She wasn't ugly – just plain. Some men liked those natural kind of women. Not him. He just figured out that his father's genes of appreciating beautiful women was beginning to show up in his self, though he was still reluctant that he did inherit that kind of gene. He liked women who wore red lipstick, smelled like powder, and shaved their legs. He liked women who made an effort to look good. This woman clearly made no effort at all.

"I'm sure you're all aware that reporter Dan Taichi-san has taken a medical leave of absence. In his place, Ryuzaki Sakuno-san will be covering our games," the owner explained. "And travelling on the road with us for the rest of the season." Ryoma thought that Schneider should've taken back that 'us' he just mentioned. The team's owner never travelled with them. Too old, he guessed.

The players sat in stunned silence. No one said a word, but Ryoma knew what they were thinking. The same thing he was thinking, that he'd rather get hit with a twist serve than have a reporter, let alone a woman, travelling with the team.

The players looked at the team coach, Coach Tezuka Kunimitsu, who sat in stony silence. Waiting for someone to say something. To rescue them from the short, dark-haired nightmare about to be foisted on them. "Well, I don't think this is a good idea," Coach Tezuka began, but one look of the owner's frosty grey eyes silenced the coach. No one dared to speak out again.

No one but Echizen Ryoma. He respected Kevin. He even liked Kevin a little. But Ryoma was having the best season in his life. The Dragons had a real good shot at the World Tennis Cup, and he'd be damned if he'd let some journalist ruin it for them. For him. This had disaster written all over it. If that wasn't enough, the word 'DISASTER' was dancing invisibly on the woman's forehead.

"With all due respect, Mr. Schneider, have you lost your friggin' mind?" he asked as he pushed himself away from the wall. There were certain things that happened on the road that you just didn't want the rest of the country to read about over a bowl of Captain Crunch cereals. Ryoma was more discreet than some of his teammates, but the last thing they needed was a reporter travelling with them. And for God's Sake, a woman. And there was always the jinx factor to consider. Anything out of the norm could turn their good luck bad. And a woman travelling with them was definitely out of the norm.

"We understand you boys' concerns," Kevin Schneider continued. "But after a great deal of thought and the assurance of both the _Tokyo's _and Ryuzaki Sakuno-san, we can guarantee you all your privacy. The reporter in no way will infringe on your personal lives."

'_Assurance my ass.' _Ryoma thought, but he didn't waste his breath arguing further. Seeing the determination on the owner's face, he knew it was pointless. Kevin Schneider paid the bills. But that didn't mean Ryoma had to like it. "Well, you better prepare her for some real crude language," he warned.

Ryuzaki turned her attention to Ryoma. Her gaze was direct and unwavering. One corner of her mouth lifted as if she was slightly amused. "I'm a journalist, Echizen-san," she said, her voice more subtle than her gaze, a surprising mix of soft femininity and edgy determination. "Your language won't shock me." He gave her a wanna-bet smirk and made his way to his stall at the back of the room. "Iz she woman who write columnz about finding date?" asked Vlad 'the Impaler', the hired Russian in the team. "I write Single Soul in Tokyo for _Tokyo's,_" she answered. Christ, she wasn't even a real sports reporter. She was one of those women who liked to talk about 'relationships and issues' in the columns, as if everything needed to be analyzed to death. As if most problems between men and women weren't the direct invention of females anyway.

"Who's she gonna room with on the road?" someone asked from the left, and laughter eased the tension somewhat. The conversation moved from Ryuzaki-san to the upcoming four games in an eight-day grind. Ryoma dropped his towel to the floor and dug into his duffel bag. Kevin Schneider had gone senile, he thought, as he tossed his white briefs and T-shirt on the bench. That or the divorce Kevin was going through was making him crazy. This woman probably didn't know a thing about tennis. She would probably want to ask feelings and dating troubles. Well, she could ask him until she turned blue and passed out, he wasn't going to answer a damn thing. After his troubles of the last few years, Ryoma never spoke to reporters. _Ever. _Having one travel with them wasn't going to change that.

He pulled his briefs up over his behind, then glanced over his shoulder at Ryuzaki-san before he slipped his T-shirt over his head. He caught her staring at her shoes, probably feeling bored as hell as the conversation around her revolved around tennis. Women sports reporters were nothing new in the locker room. If a woman didn't mind seeing a room full of bare-assed men, as far as he could tell they were treated pretty much the same as their male counterparts. But Ryuzaki-san looked as uptight as an old virgin aunt. Not that he would know anything about virgins.

He finished dressing in a pair of faded Levi's and a dark red sweater. Then he shoved his feet into his black boots and strapped his silver Rolex onto his wrist. The watch had been given to him by Kevin Schneider. A little flash to seal the deal. Before he left the building, he stopped by the office to pick his itinerary for the next eight days. It was just after noon when Ryoma left the building, the thud of his boot heels echoing off the concrete walls as he made his way to the exit. As he stepped outside, a gray mist touched his face and slid down the collar of his winter jacket. It was the kind of haze that didn't actually rain, but was gloomy as hell. The kind he had yet to get used to living in Tokyo. One of his reasons moving to Tokyo was to find peace he found on the road at nighttime. But he had a real bad feeling that his peace was about to be shattered by the woman standing a few feet away, digging around in the briefcase hanging from her shoulder.

Ryuzaki-san had wrapped herself up in some sort of slick raincoat that tied around the waist. It was long and black and the wind filled out the bottom as if she was carrying ballast in her rear end. In one hand, she still held her to-go cup of Starbucks. "That six a.m. flight to Seoul is a killer," he said as he walked towards her on his way to the parking garage. "Don't be late. It'd be a shame if you missed it."

"I'll be there," she assured him as he moved past her. "You don't want me travelling with the team. Is it because I'm a woman?"

He stopped and turned to face her. On closer inspection, she really didn't improve all that much. "No. I don't like reporters."

"That's understandable given your history, I suppose." She'd clearly read up on him.

"What history?" He wondered if she had read that piece-of-shit book _The Bad Boys of Tennis, _which had devoted five chapters of him, complete with pictures. About half of what the author claimed in that book was pure gossip and absolute fabrication. And the only reason he hadn't sued was because he didn't want the added media attention.

"Your history with the press." She took a drink of her coffee and shrugged. "The ubiquitous coverage of your problems with drugs and women." Yep, she'd read it. And who the hell used words like _ubiquitous_? Reporters, that's who. "For the record, I've never had problems with women. Ubiquitous or otherwise. You should know better than to believe everything you read."

At least not anything criminal. And his addiction to painkillers was in the past. Where he intended for it to stay.

He ran his gaze from her auburn hair, across the flawless skin of her face, and down the rest of her wrapped up in that awful coat. Maybe if she loosened up her hair she wouldn't look like such a prick. "I've read your column in the paper," he said and glanced up into her cinnamon eyes.

"You're the single girl who bitches about commitment and can't find a man." Her dark brows slashed lower and her gaze turned hard. "Meeting you, I can see your problem." He'd hit a nerve. Good. Maybe she'd stay away from him.

"Are you still clean and sober?" she asked.

He figured if he didn't answer, she was going to make up something. Reporters always do that. "Absolutely." "Really?" Her lowered brows rose in perfect arches as if she didn't really believe him. He took a step closer. "Want me to piss in your cup, sweetheart?" he asked the hard-eyed, uptight, probably-hadn't-sex-in-five-years woman in front of him.

"No thanks, I take my coffee black."

He smirked triumphantly.

As Ryoma walked away from her, the wind blew again.

"Jackass." Sakuno whispered to herself.

* * *

**#**

**Fin.**

**Oh, yeah. Some explanations:**

**#1 Advil – a type of painkiller.**


	3. Ch2: Sayuri

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**Warning:** I might change this fic into an M-rated fic cuz I've got flames regarding the rating.

* * *

**CH2: Sayuri**

_"No thanks, I take my coffee black."_

Was the last thing Ryoma heard as he left her standing alone. He might have taken a moment to appreciate her comeback if she wasn't a reporter and it didn't feel as if she were being forced on him, like it or not.

He walked the short distance to the parking garage and found his Ducati leaning on its stand next to the handicapped slot. He strapped his duffel bag on the back of the motorbike and straddled the black seat. With the heel of his boot, he kicked up the stand and fired the twin-cylinder engine. He made his way past the Bolt's bar and within a few short blocks he pulled into the common garage of his condo complex and parked the motorcycle next to his Land Cruiser. He hooked two fingers beneath the cuff of his jacket and glanced at his watch. Grabbing his duffel, he figured he had three more hours of quiet. He thought he might put in a game tape and relax in front of his big-screen television. Ryoma stepped out of the elevator onto the nineteenth floor and moved down the hall to the northeast corner condo. He opened the door, and his plans for the day collapsed as he tripped over a blue North Face backpack thrown on the beige carpet. A red snowboard coat was tossed on the navy leather sofa, and rings and bracelets were piled in a heap on top of one of the wrought-iron-and-glass end tables, rap music blaring from his stereo system.

Sayuri. Sayuri was home early.

Ryoma tossed the backpack and his duffel on the sofa as he moved down the hall. He knocked on the first of the three bedroom doors, then he cracked it open. Sayuri lay on her bed, her short dark hair pulled on top of her head like a stunted black feather duster. Mascara pooled beneath her eyes and her cheeks were pale. She held a ragged green stuffed Keroro Gunso to her chest.

"What are you doing home?" he asked as he stepped into the room. His sister sniffed as she answered, "The school tried to call you. I don't feel well." Ryoma moved closer to take a better look at his sixteen-year old half sister all curled up in her lace duvet. He figured she was probably crying about her mother again. It had only been a month since her funeral, and he thought he ought to say something to console Sayuri, but he seemed to make everything worse when he tried. "Do you have the flu?" he asked instead.

"No."

He cleared his throat. "Coming down with a cold?"

"No." she sniffed.

"What's wrong?"

She sighed. "I just feel sick."

Ryoma had been fourteen when his sister had been born to his dad and his dad's second wife. Other than a few holiday visits, Ryoma had never really been around Sayuri. He'd been so much older and busy with his own life. And until she'd come to live with him since she refused to live with their dad last month, he hadn't seen her since their grandmother's funeral ten years ago. Now he found himself suddenly responsible for a sister he didn't know. He was her only living relative under retirement age. He was a tennis player. A guy. A bachelor. And he didn't have a clue what in the hell to do with his sister. "Do you want some soup?" he asked. She shrugged as more water filled her clear amber orbs, so much like his. "I guess so," she sniffed again.

Relieved, although not showing it, Ryoma quickly left the room and headed for the kitchen. He pulled a big can of chicken noodle out of the cupboard and shoved it beneath the can opener sitting on the black marble countertop. He knew and understood that she was having a hard time, but Jesus, she was driving him crazy. Insane. If she wasn't crying, she was sulking. If she wasn't sulking, she would roll her eyes at him as if he were a moron. He poured the soup into two bowls and added water before shoving the bowls into the microwave. Besides making him crazy, having a moody teenage girl in his house seriously cut into his social life. Lately, the only time he had to himself was on the road. Something had to change. This situation wasn't working out for either of them. He'd have to hire a responsible woman to stay at home with Sayuri when he was out of town. Her name was Nanny Tinsel -whether that was her real name or not, he didn't give a damn- and she was probably in her sixties. Sayuri didn't like her, but she didn't seem to like anybody. The best thing to do would be to find Sayuri a good boarding school. She'd be happier there, living with girls her own age who knew about hair and makeup and _liked_ listening to rap.

Ryoma felt a twinge of guilt. His reasons for sending her to boarding school weren't totally altruistic. He wanted his old life back. That might make him a selfish bastard, but he'd worked hard to reclaim that life.

"I need some money."

Ryoma turned his observation of the soup spinning around in the microwave to his sister standing in the doorway of the kitchen. They'd already talked about a special account for her. "After we sell your mother's house and your Social Security starts to kick in you'll-"

"I need some today." She interrupted him. "Right now."

He reached for his wallet in his back pocket. "How much do you need?" A wrinkle appeared across her brow. "I think six or seven hundred yen," she said as she observed her fingernails. "You don't know?" Sayuri frowned. "Eight hundred to be on the safe side." Curious and because he thought he should ask as a brother, he said, "What do you need the money for?"

Her cheeks flushed, "I don't have the flu."

"What do you have?" Suppressing her annoyance towards her oblivious brother, Sayuri answered, "I have cramps and I don't have anything." Her gaze lowered to her stocking-covered feet. "I don't know any girls at school to ask, and by the time I got to the nurse, it was too late. That's why I had to come home from school."

Still not getting the vibe, Ryoma asked, "Too late for what? What are you talking about?" Sighing inaudibly, Sayuri answered, "I have cramps and I don't have any..." Her face turned red and she blurted, "Tampons. I looked in your bathroom because I tought maybe one of your girlfriends might have left some. But you don't have any."

The microwave dinged at the same moment Ryoma finally understood Sayuri's problem. He opened the door of the microwave and burned his thumbs as he set the bowls on the countertop. "Oh." He pulled out two spoons from a drawer and, and because he didn't know what to say, he asked, "Do you want crackers?"

"Yes."

Somehow, she didn't seem old enough. Did girls start their periods at sixteen? He guessed so, but he'd never thought about it. He'd been raised an only child, and his thoughts had always revolved around playing tennis. "Do you want some aspirin?" One of his few old girlfriends had taken his painkillers when she'd had cramps. When he thought back on it, his money and their addiction had been the only thing they had in common. "No." He rinsed his hands as Sayuri answered. "After lunch we'll go to the store. I could use some deodorant." She finally glanced up, but she didn't move. "Do you need to go now?"

Sayuri nodded meekly,"Badly."

He looked at her standing there, embarrassed and uncomfortable as he was. The guilt he'd felt a moment ago eased. Sending her to live with girls in her own age was definitely the right move. A girls' boarding school would know about cramps and other female things. "I'll get my keys," he said. Now he just had to find a way to break the news to her without making her file like she was unwanted.

"Say that again?" Osakada Tomoka's fork paused halfway to her mouth, a piece of lettuce and chicken suspended in midair. "I'm covering the Dragons' games and travelling with them on the road," Sakuno repeated for the benefit of her childhood friend. "The tennis team?" Tomoka worked at the famous Tokyo Complex selling her favourite addiction – shoes. In appearance, she and Sakuno were on opposite ends of the spectrum. She was tall, red-headed, and a walking advertisement of beauty and good taste. And their temperaments weren't much closer. Sakuno was introverted, while Tomoka didn't have an expression or emotion that wasn't expressed. Sakuno shopped from catalogues. Tomoka considered catalogues a Tool of Satan. The two friends were day and night, fire and ice, but they shared a common history that bonded them like Super Glue. Tomoka's mother had run off with a rock star, leaving her to take care of her triplet younger brothers while her dad worked as a mechanic to support them. Sakuno had grown up without a mother at all since six. Grown up now, they each dealt with the past in their own ways. Sakuno socked away money as if each pay check were her last, while Tomoka blew outrageous sums on designer shoes like she was Oprah Winfrey.

Tomoka set her fork on the side of her plate and placed a hand on her chest. "You get to travel with the Dragons and interview them while they're naked?" Sakuno nodded and dug into the lunch special, macaroni and cheese with smoked ham chunks and crushed croutons baked on top. "Hopefully, they'll keep their pants up until I leave the locker room." Tomoka widened her eyes."You're kidding right? What reason, other than seeing buff men, is there for walking into a smelly locker room?" Sakuno licked her lips, "Interviewing them for the paper." Now that she'd seen all of them this morning, she was beginning to feel a bit apprehensive. Next to her five-foot stature, they were huge.

"Do you think they'd notice if you snapped some pictures?"

The question caught Sakuno offguard and she let out a surprised laugh. "They might. They didn't seem as dumb as you'd expect."

"Bummer, I wouldn't mind seeing some naked tennis players."

And now that Sakuno had seen them all, seeing them naked was one aspect of the job that worried her. She had to travel with these men. Sit with them on the airplane. She didn't want to know what they looked like without their clothes. And while she wrote explicit sexual fantasies for a living, in her real life she wasn't all that comfortable with blatant nudity. She was not like the woman who wrote about dating and relationships in the column for the _Tokyo's. _And she was absolutely nothing like Sweet Sakura.

Sakuno realized for the umpteenth time that she was a fraud.

"If you can't take pictures," Tomoka said as she reached for her fork once more and picked the chicken from her oriental salad, "take notes for me."

Sakuno grinned. "That's unethical on a lot of different levels," she informed her friend. Then she thought about Ryoma's offer to 'piss' in her coffee, and she figured she could bend ethics in his case. "I did see Echizen Ryoma's butt."

Tomoka gasped. "_Au naturel_?"

"As the day he was born."

Tomoka leaned forward. "How was it?"

Sakuno made an 'O' sign with her thumb and index finger and winked. "Good." She pictured Ryoma's sculpted shoulders and back, the indent of his spine, and his towel sliding down his perfect behind. "Really fine." No denying it, Echizen Ryoma was a beautiful man; too bad his personality sucked.

"God," Tomoka sighed, "why didn't I finish college and get a job like yours?" Sakuno lifted a brow.

"Too many parties."

"Oh yeah." Tomoka lowered her gaze onto Sakuno's body and clothing. Blinking, Sakuno asked, "What?" Her childhood friend had her lips turned downwards. "You should get new clothes." Sakuno continued with her lunch and mumbled. "I have new clothes." Tomoka sighed. "I mean new, as in attractive. You wear too much black and navy. People will begin to wonder if you're depressed."

Sakuno chuckled. "I'm not depressed."

"Maybe not, but you should wear color. What ever happened to pink? You used to like baby blue and pink... I think you should stick with those. Maybe add a splash of red, it suits your hair. You're going to be travelling with big, strong, testosterone-infused men all season. It's the perfect opportunity to get a guy interested in you."

Sakuno was travelling with the team on business. She didn't want to catch the interest of a man. Especially a tennis player. Especially if they were all like Echizen Ryoma. When she'd declined his offer regarding her coffee, he'd smirked. He even mispronounced cup. Instead of saying cup, he'd said 'coup'. He was a jerk who hadn't lost his American accent. The last thing she wanted or needed was to attract attention from men like him. She glanced down at her navy blazer and pants, and her black blouse. She thought she looked okay.

"It's J. Crew."

Tomoka narrowed her eyes and Sakuno knew what was coming. J. Crew was _not _Donna Karan.

"Exactly. From the catalogue?"

"Of course, Tomo-chan. From that 'Tool of Satan'." Ignoring Sakuno's sarcasm, Tomoka continued, "And black."

"You know I'm color blind." Sakuno said as she touched her blazer which she considered her favorite, though the rest looked pretty much identical. Tomoka sighed. "Sakuno, you are not color blind. You just can't tell when things clash." Sakuno thought for a while. Tomoka was true. That's why she liked black. She looked professional and good in black. She couldn't make a faux pas in black. "You've got a nice little body, Sakuno. You should work it, show it off. Come back to Tokyo Complex with me, and I'll help you pick out nice things."

Sakuno held up her palms, "No way. The last time I let you pick out my clothes, I looked like Oprah Winfrey. Only not as groovy." Defending herself, Tomoka said, "That was when we were twelve and we had to go to Goodwill to do our shopping. We're older and have more money. At least you do." Yes, and she intended to keep it that way too. She had plans for her future. Plans that included buying a house, not designer shoes and clothes. "I like the way I dress." She said as if they hadn't had the same conversation a thousand times in the past.

Tomoka rolled her eyes and changed the subject. "I met a guy."

Of course she had. Since they'd both turned thirty, Tomoka's biological clock had started ticking and all she'd been able to think about were her eggs shriveling up. She decided it was time to get married and since she didn't want to leave Sakuno out of the fun, she'd decided it was time they both get married. But there was a problem with Tomoka's plan. Sakuno had pretty much decided that she was a magnet for men who would break her heart and treat her bad, and since jerks seemed to be the only type of man who made her go all weak and sweaty, she'd been thinking about getting a cat and staying home. But she was stuck in a catch. If she stayed home, she wouldn't discover any new material for her _Single Soul in Tokyo_ column.

"He has a friend," Tomoka broke Sakuno's thoughts.

"The last 'friend' you set me up with drove a serial killer van."

"I know, and he wasn't real pleased to read about himself in your Tokyo's column."

"Too bad. He was one of those guys who assumes I'm desperate because of the column."

Tomoka sighed, "This time will be different. I promise."

"No." Sakuno said, not looking up from her plate.

"You might like him."

"That's the problem. If I like him, I know he'll treat me like crap, then dump me."

"Sakuno, you rarely give anyone the chance to dump you. You always keep one foot out the door, waiting for an excuse." Sakuno rolled her eyes. Tomoka didn't have a lot of room to talk. She dumped guys for being too perfect. "You haven't had a boyfriend since Arai," Tomoka reasoned.

"Yeah, and look how that turned out." he'd borrowed money from her to buy other women presents. As far as she could tell, he'd bought mainly cheap lingerie. Sakuno hated cheap lingerie.

"Okay then, Sakuno dear. You win."

After lunch, Sakuno dropped Tomoka off at Tokyo Complex then drove to the Tokyo's building. Because she wrote a monthly column, she didn't have a desk at the paper. In fact, she hardly ever ventured into the building.

She met with the sports editor and he didn't have to tell her he was less than thrilled to have her covering for Dan. His reception of her was so cold, he could have chilled a glass on his forehead. He introduced her to the three other sports reporters, and their welcome wasn't much warmer than the editor's. Except for Hiyoshi Wakashi. Even though she was hardly ever in the Tokyo's building, she'd heard about him. He was known by the females as the Creeper and was a sexual harassment lawsuit just waiting to happen. The look he gave her told her he was thinking about her naked, and he smiled like she should be flattered or something.

The hell with him.

The look she returned told him she'd rather eat rat poison.

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**A/N: Hope ya guys like this, it's not really long. I've been so busy for my papers for the last two weeks and now I'm still behind schedule. But I will update, I promise. Just not as frequent. **


	4. Ch3: Cow Pajamas

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: I've just read the review and I'm really glad you guys like this fic. I'm really sorry if Ryoma's OOC in this fic. I just wanna say thanks a lot for the refreshing reviews and Ihope to finish this fic in a nice manner. Luv y'all!**

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**CH3: Cow Pajamas.**

The BACC-111 lifted off from Narita Airport at six twenty-three a.m. Within minutes, the jet broke through the cloud cover and banked left. A mix of aftershave and cologne filled the cabin as the jet finished its ascent and evened out. Without taking her eyes from the itinerary in her lap, Sakuno reached over her head and adjusted the air. She turned its full force on her face as she looked over the team schedule. She noticed that some of their flights left right after the game while others left the next morning. But except for the flight times their schedule was pretty much the same. The team practiced the day before each game and did a 'light' run-through the day of the game. It never varied. She set aside the itinerary and picked up a copy of the _Tennis News. _The morning light broke over the team reports, and she paused to read a column concerning the Dragons. The subhead read, 'Tokyo Dragons' Key to Success.'

For the past few weeks, Sakuno had crammed her head with tennis stats. She'd familiarized with the names of the Dragons and the positions they played. She'd read as many newspaper articles on the team as she could find, but she still didn't have a firm grasp on the game or its players. She was going to fly by the seat of her pants and hope she didn't crash and burn. She needed the respect and trust of these men. She wanted them to treat her as they did other sports journalists.

In her briefcase, she'd stashed two valuable books: _Tennis for Dummies_ and The _Bad Boys of Tennis. _The first gave her the rudiments and the how-tos, while the other told the dark side of the game and the men who played it. Without lifting her face she glanced across the aisle and down a row. Her gaze followed the emergency lights running down the dark blue carpeting and stopped on Echizen Ryoma's polished loafers and charcoal trousers. Since their conversation at the Key Arena, she'd done more research on him than the other players.

He'd been born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His father was the great Samurai Nanjiroh and divorced his mother when he was just fifteen. The most interesting reading had come from _The Bad Boys of Tennis _which had devoted an entire five chapters to Ryoma. The book had gone into detail about the bad-boy Captain, claiming he had the quickest hands on and off the tennis court. The photos had shown a string of actresses and models on his arm.

Her gaze rose from his hand and long fingers tapping the arm of his seat. A sliver of his gold Rolex peeked from beneath the cuff of his white-and-blue-striped shirt. She took in his shoulder and the profile of his high cheekbones and straight nose. His hair was cut short like a gladiator ready to battle. Assuming half of the juicy details of him of the bad-boy book were true, Echizen Ryoma had a woman stashed in every city the team visited. Sakuno was surprised he wasn't terminally exhausted.

Like all the other players, this morning Ryoma looked more like a businessman or an investment banker rather than a tennis player. Earlier at the airport Sakuno had been surprised to see the whole team show up in suits and ties as if they were on their way to the office.

Her view suddenly blocked, Sakuno glanced up into the battered face of doubles player Momoshiro Takeshi. Bent over to accommodate the low ceiling, he appeared scarier than usual. Usually Sakuno wouldn't have memorized each face, but Momoshiro was one of those guys who was easy to remember. He was six foot five, two hundred and fifty pounds of intimidating muscle. At the moment he sported a brilliant shiner beneath one of his violet eyes. He'd taken off his suit jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and loosened his tie. He glanced at the briefcase on the seat next to her.

"Do you mind if I sit down for a few?"

Sakuno hated to admit it but she'd always been unnerved by big guys because they take up so much space and make her feel small and a little vulnerable. "Ahh, no." She grabbed the leather handle and shoved the briefcase on the floor by her feet.

Momo crammed his big body in the seat next to her and pointed to the newspaper in her hands. "Did you read the article that I wrote? It's on page six."

"Not yet." Feeling a bit boxed in Sakuno thumbed to page six and looked at a game photo of Momoshiro. He had some guy in a headlock.

"That's me feeding Rasmussen his lunch in his rookie season."

She glanced sideways at Momo, taking in his black eye and broken nose. "Why?"

"Scored a Dunk Smash."

"Isn't that his job?"

"Sure but it's _my_ job to make things rough for him." He shrugged. "Make him a little nervous when he sees me coming."

Sakuno thought it was polite to keep her opinions of his job to herself. Then he pointed to the paper. "What do you think?"

She skimmed the article, which seem to be well enough written. "Do you think I hooked the readers in the first graph?"

"Graph?"

"It's short for paragraph."

She knew what _graph_ meant. " 'I am more than a punching bag,' " she read out loud. "That got my attention."

Momo smiled showing a row of beautiful white teeth. Sakuno wondered how many times they'd been knocked out and replaced. "I had a lot of fun writing that," he said. "When I retire, I'm thinking maybe I'll write articles full-time. Maybe you could give me some pointers."

Getting a foot in the door was easier said than done. Her own resume was less than stellar, but she didn't want to rain on Momo's parade by telling him the truth. "I'll help you, if I can."

"Thanks." He half rose and pulled out his wallet from his back pocket. When he sat down again, he flipped it open and pulled out a photograph. "This is Hanabi," he said as he handed her a picture of a baby girl resting on his chest.

"She's so tiny. How old is she?"

"One month. Isn't she the prettiest thing you've ever seen?"

Sakuno has always been a softie for little kids, especially girls. "She's gorgeous."

" Do you have any kids?" he asked her as he noticed her eyes going all glassy.

"No, I've never been married," she answered and the conversation turned to which player was married and who had how many children. Not exactly stimulating conversation, but it alleviated her worries that the players would shut her out.

She handed Momo his photograph and decided to get down to business. To dazzle them with her research, or to at least let them know she wasn't clueless. "Given the age and lack of franchise players the Seoul Coyotes are playing better than expected this year," she said, reciting what she'd just read. "What are your biggest concerns going into Wednesday's game?"

He stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. Latin, perhaps. Momo shoved the baby photo in his wallet. "Here comes breakfast," he said as he stood. The doubles player quickly departed making it quite clear that while she was good enough to talk with about journalism and babies, he wasn't going to talk with her about tennis. And as the flight progressed, it became even more clear to Sakuno that the players were ignoring her now. Except for her brief conversation with Momoshiro, no one else spoke to her. Well, they couldn't ignore her forever. They had to allow her locker room access and answer her questions. They had to talk to her or face a discrimination lawsuit.

She refused a bran muffin and orange juice and raised the arm between the chairs. She scooted to the aisle seat, spread out her articles and books, then took off her gray wool blazer. She got down to business of figuring out what points were as opposed to points. What penalty or any kind of punishment was awarded for each foul play, if tennis was like hockey; where the players were sent to the sinbin if there were any dirty tricks up a player's sleeves. She also studied the ever-confusing deuce. She grabbed a brick of post-its out of her briefcase, scribbled notes, and stuck them inside the book.

She scribbled notes regarding tennis terminology she didn't know then glanced down a row at Ryoma. His hand rested beside a glass of orange juice on the tray table. His long fingers tore at a cocktail napkin, and he rubbed bits of paper between his fingers and thumb. Someone called his name and he leaned forward and glanced toward the back. His amber gaze landed somewhere behind Sakuno, and he smiled at some joke she didn't get. His teeth were white and straight, and he had a smile that could make women think of hot sinful thoughts. Then he lowered his gaze to her and she forgot about his teeth. He simply looked at her as if he couldn't quite figure out how she'd gotten there – like a spot on his tie – then his scrutiny slid down her face and neck to the middle of her blouse. For some disturbing reason, her breath caught in her chest, right where his gaze rested. The moment became suspended. Prolonged. Hanging between them until his brows pulled into a straight line. Then, without looking up, he turned away. She finally let out her breath, and once again she had the feeling she had been judged and found lacking by Echizen Ryoma.

As the aircraft touched down in Seoul, the tennis players straightened their ties, put on their jackets, and filed out toward the bus. Ryoma waited until Ryuzaki Sakuno passed before he stepped into the aisle behind her. While shrugging into his Hugo Boss jacket, he studied her from behind.

She'd hung a wool blazer over the same arm that held a big briefcase crammed full of books and newspapers. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and the ends curled and brushed her shoulders as they moved forward. She was short, the top of her head reached to just below his chin, and through the haze of cologne and aftershave he smelled a hint of something flowery.

The edge of her briefcase caught the back of a seat and she stumbled. Ryoma grasped her arm to steady her as newspapers, books and multiple notes fell to the cabin floor. He let go of her arm then knelt beside her in the cramped aisle. He picked up a book on the official tennis rules and _Tennis for Dummies. _"Don't know much about the game, huh?" He said as he passed her the books. The tips of his fingers brushed hers as she glanced up at him.

With her face inches from his, he took the opportunity to study her. Her skin was flawless and there was a slight pink flush to her smooth cheeks. Her eyes were the color of cinnamon, and he could make out the faint lines of contact lenses on the edges of her irises. If she wasn't a reporter and hadn't already asked him if he was still drug-free the first time they'd met, maybe he'd think she wasn't all that bad-looking. Maybe he'd even think she was kind of cute. Maybe.

"I know plenty," she said as she pulled her hand away and stuffed her books into her overstuffed briefcase.

"Sure you do, Ace." He tore a sticky note from the knee of his pants. On it was written: _What the heck is a deuce? _He grabbed her wrist and slapped the note in her palm. "Mada mada dane."

Sakuno pretended she didn't hear that last comment.

They stood and he took the briefcase from her. "I can carry that," she protested as she shoved the note into her pants pocket.

"Let me."

Sakuno nearly said _BAH!_ Instead, she put her hands on her hips. "If you're trying to be nice, it's too late."

"I'm not being nice. I'd like to get out of here before the bus leaves."

"Oh." She opened her mouth to say more but closed it again. They proceeded down the aisle, the swing of her ponytail told him of her agitation. Once inside the bus, she sat next to the general manager, and Ryoma dumped the briefcase into her lap and walked to the back. Momo leaned forward as Ryoma dropped into a seat in front of the doubles player.

"Hey, Lucky," Momo said. "Don't you think she's kinda cute?"

Ryoma the 'Lucky' Captain glanced several rows up at the back of Ms. Ryuzaki's head and the curls of her tight ponytail. She wasn't bad-looking, but she wasn't his type. He liked Barbie Doll women. All tennis players do. Long legs and red lips. He knew what that said about him, and he didn't particularly care. Ms. Ryuzaki had nice skin and her hair might be okay if she didn't pull it back so tight, but her chest was small. A picture of the front of her blouse flashed across his brain. He'd turn to ask something Vlad Fetisov had asked him, and he'd noticed her the first time since takeoff. Then he noticed the two distinct points in the front of her silky blouse. Maybe he had been mistaken, maybe his eyes were getting unfocused. But he had eyes as sharp as an eagle. For a brief moment he'd wondered if she was cold or turned on.

"Cute? Not especially" he answered Momoshiro.

"Do you think that it's true she slept with Mr. Schneider to get this job?"

That caught Ryoma off guard. He raised a brow as he glanced at the bouncing curls of her ponytail as she nodded to something the general manager said. "Is that what the guys are saying?"

Momo shrugged. "Either him or his friend at the _Tokyo Times_."

The thought of a young woman getting it on with two old geezers to get a job turned Ryoma's stomach. He didn't know why it should bother him one way or the other, and with a shrug he dismissed Ms. Ryuzaki and whether she may or may not be sleeping with from his mind. He was expecting an important call from his business manager, Howie. Howie used to live in Canada and sent all three of his children to boarding school in southern California. The more Ryoma thought about it, the more he was convinced that boarding school was the perfect solution for Sayuri. She'd be happier, more secured, and he'd get his life back. An all-round situation for everyone.

The Dragons checked into the hotel by eleven, had a quick lunch, and were on the courts by two for their scheduled practice at the Seoul West Arena. The team hadn't lost a match in two weeks, and Ryoma had put out five games already this season. The team hadn't been a real threat since their former captain Sanada Genichirou retired. This year was different. This year they were hot.

By four, the Dragons were back at the hotel and Ryoma rode the elevator to his room and placed a call to a friend. Two hours later, he stepped back off the elevator and ready to live his life while he could. He'd first met Kim Suzy on a flight from Seoul to China before. She'd served him a soda water and lime, a bag of peanuts and a cocktail napkin with her phone number written on it. That had been three years ago, and they'd got together whenever he was in Seoul or she happened to be in Tokyo. The situation was mutually satisfying. He satisfied her. She satisfied him.

Tonight he met Kim in the lobby and together they drove to a fancy restaurant where Ryoma ate his night-before-the-game meal. She had him back at the hotel by curfew. He loved his life on the road. Walking back into the hotel, he was completely calm, relaxed, and ready to take on the Coyotes tomorrow.

He talked for a few minutes with his teammates in the lobby bar, then made his way up to his room. His right knee bothered him a little, and he grabbed the empty ice bucket from atop the television, then walked down the hall to the ice machine. He nearly turned when he saw Ms. Ryuzaki standing in front of the vending machine, feeding it change. Her hair was pulled on top of her head and fell in a tangle of loose curls. She stepped forward and pushed the button to her selection, and a bag of peanut M&M's dropped to the bottom of the machine. She bent over and that's when he noticed her nicely rounded butt with cows on it. In fact, she had cows all over her blue pajamas. She turned and he was confronted by a horror worse than those pajamas. A pair of black-rimmed glasses sat on her face. The lenses were small and square, and he supposed they were in style with homosexual groups. They were just plain ugly.

Seeing him, her eyes widened and she sucked in a startled breath. "I thought you guys were supposed to be in bed by now," she said.

Damn, he didn't think a woman could look any more sexless. "What is this?" he asked and pointed the ice bucket at her. "The I-don't-ever-wanna-get-laid-again look?"

She frowned. "This might shock you, but I'm here to do my job, not to get laid."

"Good thing." He thought of his conversation with Momo and wondered if she'd slept with Kevin Schneider to get her job. Ryoma didn't listen to gossip and didn't know how much of it was true. He just couldn't picture Mr. Schneider in the role of a hound, though. "I doubt you'll find any excitement anyway."

Sakuno ripped open her bag of candy. "You don't seem to have a problem with finding excitement, _Lucky_."

Ryoma didn't like the way she said 'Lucky' and he didn't ask her to elaborate. She did anyway. "I saw you leave with the blonde. If I had to guess, I'd say she was a stewardess. She had that come-fly-me look about her."

Ryoma moved to the ice machine and lifted the lid. "She was my cousin, twice removed."

She didn't look like she believed him, but he didn't care. She'd believe what she wanted and write what sold papers.

"What's with the ice? Your knees bothering you?"

"Nope." She was too damn smart for her own good.

"Who's Ivanovich?" she asked.

Ivanovich was a legendary tennis player who'd played more games than anyone could imagine in history. Ryoma admired his record and his dedication. It was no big secret either. "Have you been reading up on me again?" he asked as he scooped ice with his bucket. "I'm flattered." He said, but he didn't bother to make it sound convincing.

Sakuno, oblivious to his lack of enthusiasm of his last comment, waved a small hand. "Don't be. It's my job." She popped an M&M's into her mouth and when he didn't say anything she lifted a brow. "You're not going to answer my question?"

Not even looking up at her, he flatly said "Nope."

She'd soon learned that none of the guys were going to cooperate either. They'd all talked about it and come up with a plan to confuse and bug the hell out of her. Maybe get her to go home. Outside the locker room, they'd show her baby pictures and talked about anything other than what she wanted to talk about the most. Tennis. Inside the locker room they'd cooperate just enough to avoid discrimination suit, but that was it. Ryoma didn't think much of the scheme. Sure it would bug her, but not enough to make her go home. No, after talking to her a few times, he figured there wasn't much that could knock Ms. Ryuzaki off her pumps.

"Tell you what, though." Ryoma shut the lid of the ice machine and said close to her ear as he walked past, "Keep digging, 'cause that Ivanovich thing's a real interesting story."

"Digging is also my job, but don't worry, I'm not interested in your dirty little secrets," she called after him.

Ryoma didn't have any dirty secrets. Not anymore. There were parts of his personal life he'd rather not read about in the papers, though. He opened the door to his room and shut himself inside. There was only one secret he didn't want anyone to know. One secret that woke him up in a cold sweat. Each time he played, he played with the possibility that one good hit would cripple him for life, and worse, end his career.

Ryoma dumped the ice into a hand towel and stripped to his white boxers. He scratched his belly, then sat on the bed with his knee elevated over a pillow, the ice packed around it.

His whole life, all he'd ever wanted was to play tennis and win the World Tennis Cup. He'd lived and breathed it for so long, that's all he knew. For a while, his future had gotten off track. He'd slid into a vicious cycle of pain and addiction and prescription drugs. Of recovery and hard work. And now finally a chance to return to the game that made him feel alive. Whatever it took, no matter how much pain he had to get through, he'd be damned if he'd let anything stand between him and his shot at the cup.

Especially a certain short reporter with a nice butt and cow pajamas.

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**God, that was quite a while since I've written a chapter. Sorry again if I've taken a long time to update but I'm dang busy. But I WILL finish this fic, so don't worry too much, ne? Thanks a lot for your support and I hope you guys will learn to love this fic. Bye!**


	5. Ch4: Between a Player's Legs

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: Heya guys! Here I am again. Thanx a lot for the reviews, they just made me wanna update even faster. :-) I hope that this chapter will bring about more reviews and morelove. Love ya guys! *wink***

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**CH4: Between a Player's Legs**

The telephone next to Sakuno's laptop rang and she stared at it for a moment before she picked up. "Hello," But there was no one on the other end.

There hadn't been the last seven times it had rung either. She dialed the front desk and she was told they didn't know where the calls originated. Sakuno had a pretty good idea the calls came from men with dragons on their jerseys.

She left the receiver off the hook and glanced at the clock on the bedside stand. She had five hours before the game. Five hours to finish her _Single Soul in Tokyo_ column. She should have started her column last night, but she'd been exhausted and jet-lagged and all she wanted to do was lie in bed, read her research books, and eat chocolate. If Ryoma hadn't snuck up on her at the vending machine the night before, she would've bought a Milky Way too. Having been caught in her cow pajamas had been bad enough. She hadn't wanted him to think of her as a pig, but really, why should she care what he thought of her?

She didn't know, except she supposed that it was in a woman's genetic makeup to care what handsome men thought. If Ryoma was ugly, she probably wouldn't have cared. If he didn't have those clear amber eyes, long lashes, and a body to make a nun weep, she would have grabbed that Milky Way and probably chase it down with a Hershey's Big Block. If it weren't for his evil smirk that had her thinking sinful thoughts and remembering the sight of his naked butt, she might not have heard herself babbling about stewardesses like a jealous rink bunny. She couldn't afford for any of the players to see her as anything other than a professional. Their reception of her had warmed little since they'd arrived. They spoke to her about recipes and babies, as if by virtue of having a uterus she was naturally interested. But if she brought up tennis, their mouths shut tight as clams.

Five hours and fifteen minutes after she'd started her column, she finally pushed send on her laptop. She shoved her notebook into her big purse, then raced to the door. She ran down the hall to the elevators and practically had to wrestle a couple from a cab. When she walked into the Seoul West Arena, the Seoul Coyotes were just being introduced. The crowd went crazy cheering for their team. She'd been given a pass to the press box, but Sakuno wanted to be as close as possible to the action. She finagled a seat three rows up from the boards, wanting to see and feel as much as she could of her first tennis game. She really didn't know what to expect, she just hoped to God the Dragons didn't lose and blame it on her.

She found her place behind the waiting bench of the Dragons' side just as the Dragons stepped onto the court. Boos filled the arena, and Sakuno glanced around at the ill-behaved Coyotes fans. She'd seen a match on television once, but she didn't remember the fans being so rude.

She turned her attention back to the court as the players took their places for the first doubles match. As the other players walked back to their waiting bench, she watched as Ryoma walked toward her, geared up and ready for battle. She'd done more research on Ryoma than on the other players, and she knew that everything he wore was custom-made. The arena lights shone off his white cap and suddenly Sakuno had the feeling she should read up on Ivanovich. Just in case he asked her if she knew about the legendary player.

Ryoma patted his shoulders with his racket, shrugged off his jersey, and walked onto the court. Just before the game started, everyone turned quiet. He was the first to serve. The tennis ball was tossed high into the air, and with a slight smirk on his lips, the game was on as the ball came in contact with the gutter strings of his red weapon. The fans screamed as their favorite player returned the hits delivered by Ryoma. The smell of hot dogs and Budweiser soon hung in the air.

In preparation, Sakuno had already viewed many game tapes. While she knew the game to be fast-paced, the tapes had not conveyed the frenetic energy or the way that energy infected the crowd. As Sakuno took note of everything around her, she discovered what the tapes, even the television, did not show. The action wasn't always where the tennis balls were being hit. A lot of the activity took place on the waiting benches with death daggers and swearing words were being exchanged between players of opposite sides while the actual action was being played on the center court. On several occasions she watched Ryoma hit the ball so hard, that when it bounced off the court it directly whacked the ankles of a Seoul Player unfortunate enough to sit within whacking distance by the benches. He was good at delivering hard shots with his left hand, and when he accidentally whacked the shin of a Coyotes doubles player, Kim Wooyoung, two men behind Sakuno jumped up and yelled, "You play like a girly man, Echizen!"

As the match progressed, Sakuno noticed that the heckling from the crowd was not limited to the Dragons' captain. Anytime when a Tokyo player came within hollering distance, the men behind Sakuno yelled, "You suck, Japonnaise!" or japannesse, or whatever they pronounced the word Japanese.

"You suck, Momo!" the men behind Sakuno yelled again, and she wondered if the players could hear the fans over the collective noise. She knew she'd have to drink a lot of booze to before she had the courage to tell the scary Dunker he sucked. She'd be too afraid he'd meet her in the parking lot later and 'feed her lunch'.

After the first two doubles match, the score was 1-1, mostly due to some amazing saves by both opposing sides. But the Coyotes came out strong and won the match in the first singles, and then the match stopped at a tie of 3-3 in the second singles due to injuries by both sides of the opponent. It was all up to Ryoma to bring the match to a win so that they would beat the Coyotes in overtime. He came out onto the court again after three minutes of time-out and as he changed court, one of the men behind Sakuno yelled, "Eat me, Echizen!" his breath reeked of alcohol. "Eat me!"

Ryoma glanced up and one of Sakuno's questions was answered. He'd clearly heard the men behind her. Without expression of any sort, he simply looked at them. He took off his cap, ran a hand trough his damp hair, and put the cap back on. As he adjusted the brim of his cap, his gaze lowered until it landed on Sakuno. He stared at her for several long seconds before he turned to his opponent, ready for battle. Sakuno couldn't tell what he thought of the two men, but she had bigger concerns than Ryoma's feelings. She crossed her fingers and hoped the Dragons beat the Coyotes.

_We have to remember we're dealing with tennis players. You know they can be real superstitious, _Takeyama had warned. _If the Dragons start losing games, you'll get blamed and send packing_. After the way they were already treating her, Sakuno figured they didn't need much of an excuse.

It took Ryoma fifteen minutes and twenty seconds, but he finally scored. Sakuno let out a relieved breath. Game over, or so she thought. Instead twenty more minutes were put on the game and Ryoma battled it out in overtime. Neither team won though as the scores remained as a tie without any team winning a round within the given overtime. Now Sakuno could breathe easy. They couldn't blame her for their loss and send her packing. Too bad.

She gathered her purse and shoved her notebook and pen inside. She headed to the Dragons' locker room, flashing her press pass. Her stomach twisted into knots as she moved down the hall. She was a professional. She could do this. No problem. _Keep your gaze pinned to their eyes,_ she reminded herself as she took out her small tape recorder. She entered the room and stopped as if the bottom of her Doc Martens were suddenly glued to the floor. Men in various degrees of undress stood in front of the benches, peeling off their clothes. Hard muscles and sweat. Bare chests and backs. A flash of a naked stomach and butt, and…

_Good Lord! _Her cheeks burned and her eyes about jumped from her skull as she couldn't help but stare at Vlad Fetisov's Russian-sized package. Sakuno jerked her gaze up, but not before she discovered that what she'd heard about European men was true. Vlad wasn't circumcised, and that was just a little more info than she wanted. For one brief second she thought she should mumble an apology, but of course she couldn't apologize, because that would be admitting that she'd seen something. She glanced at the other male reporters and they weren't apologizing. So why did she feel like she was in high school peeking in the boys' locker room?

_You've seen a penis before in biology class, Sakuno. No big deal. If you've seen one penis, you've seen them all… Well, okay, that's not true. Some penises are better than others. Stop! Stop thinking about penises!_ She chastened herself. _You're not here to stare, you're here to do a job, and you have just as much right to be here as male reporters do. It's the law, and you're a professional._ Yeah, that's what she told herself as she wove her way through players and other journalists, careful to keep her gaze above the shoulders, but she was the only female in the room filled with big, rugged, _naked_ tennis players. She couldn't help but feel very much out of place.

She kept her eyes up as she joined the reporters interviewing the Dragons' Kirihara Akaya, the second singles player who managed to keep the game at a tie before both players had to be escorted out of the court. She dug out her notebook as he dropped his shorts. She was almost certain he was wearing long underwear, but she wasn't about to check it out. _Don't look, Sakuno. Whatever you do, don't look down._

She turned on her tape recorder and interrupted one of her male counterparts. "After your injury last month," she began, "there was some speculation that you might not be able to go through more than 2 rounds into the match. I think that tie put the rumours to bed."

Kirihara planted a foot on the bench in front of him and glanced across his shoulder at her. His cheek had an angry red welt, and his bandaged shoulder sported some faint blue outlines. He unwound the tape from the top of his socks and took so long to respond she began to fear he didn't plan to answer after all.

"I hope so," he finally spoke. Three words. That was it.

"How do you feel about the tie?" asked a reporter next to her.

"The Coyotes played a tough game tonight. Naturally we wanted the win, but we'll take a tie."

When she tried to ask more questions, she was talked over and shut out. She soon felt as if she were being conspired against. She tried to tell herself that she was probably being paranoid, but when she moved to the small group interviewing one of the doubles player that played in the first doubles match, Kaidoh Kaoru, he looked right through her and answered the questions asked by someone else.

She tried to talk to a rookie with a shiny black Mohawk, figuring he might be grateful for any exposure, but his Japanese was so poor, she didn't understand more than two words. She walked toward the Dunker, Momoshiro, but he dropped his briefs and she kept going. While she could tell herself that she was a pro and this was a job, she couldn't bring herself to walk up to a totally naked man. Not on the first night.

Soon it became obvious to her that some of the other reporters resented her too, and the players were not going to answer any more of her questions. She wasn't all that surprised by the male journalists' attitudes. The sports-beat reporters at the _Tokyo_ hadn't treated her any better.

Fine, she could write the column with what she already had, she thought as she made her way to the team's captain. Ryoma sat on a bench in the corner of the room, a big duffel on the floor by his feet. He'd removed everything but his navy boxers and socks. He was bare from the waist up, and he'd wrapped a towel around his neck. The ends hung halfway down his chest, and as he watched her approach, he shot water from a plastic bottle into his mouth. A bead of moisture dripped from his bottom lip, slipped down his chin, and dropped to his sternum. Leaving a trail of moisture, it descended the define planes of his chest and hard stomach and dipped into his navel. He had a black horseshoe tattooed on his lower belly. The shadowing of the groove and the nail holes gave depth and dimension to his flesh, and the heels curved upward on each side of his belly button. The bottom of the tattoo disappeared beneath the waistband of his underwear, and Sakuno doubted he needed the luck of a horseshoe tattooed above his goods.

"I don't give interviews," he said before she could even open her mouth.

"With all that research you'd done on me, I'd thought you'd know that."

She did, but she didn't feel particularly amiable. The boys' club had shoved her out, and she felt like shoving back. She turned on her recorder. "How do you feel about tonight's game?"

She didn't expect him to answer and he didn't.

"It looked like you got your zone on that court right before the game started."

The faint scar on his chin appeared quite prominent, but his face appeared emotionless like a cactus. Sakuno only dug in her heels.

"Isn't it hard to concentrate when fans are yelling at you?"

With the edge of the towel, he wiped his face. But he didn't respond.

"If it were me, I think I'd have a hard time ignoring those nasty insults."

His feline eyes continued to stare into hers, but one corner of his mouth turned down as if he found her very annoying.

"Until tonight, I had no idea tennis fans were so rude. Those men behind me were drunk and disgusting. I can't imagine standing up and yelling, 'Eat me,' in a crowd like they did."

He pulled the towel from around his neck and finally said, "Ace, if you'd stood up and yelled, 'Eat me,' I doubt you'd be standing here right now bugging the hell out of me."

A brow rose to her forehead as she asked, "Why's that?"

Ignoring, he stood and hooked his thumbs beneath the elastic of his underwear. "Now run along and harass somebody else." When she didn't move, he added, "Unless you want to embarrass yourself some more."

With her flaming cheeks and pounding head, she said, "I'm not embarrassed."

"You keep blushing as if your face is on fire. There's a water hose out there. Rinse yourself." He said through a sexy as hell smirk but looked good enough to knee in the nuts.

"It's very hot in here," she lied. Was he the only who'd noticed? Probably not. "Very hot."

"It's about to get hotter." He'd said _aboot_. Another accent that he couldn't quite get rid of.

She turned and beat a hasty retreat. Not because he told her to or because of the threat of burning her alive on the spot by his sexy as hell comment, but because she had a deadline. Yeah, she had a deadline, she told herself as she walked from the locker room, careful to keep her gaze from falling on any more naked parts.

By the time she made it back to her room much alive, it was already ten o'clock. She had a column to write and a deadline to meet, all before she could put herself to bed. She plugged in her laptop and got to work on her first sports column. She knew the beat reporters at the _Tokyo's _would tear it apart and look for flaws, but she was determined they would find none. She was determined to write better than a man.

_Dragons Tie Coyotes; Captain Makes Save, _she wrote, but she quickly discovered that writing a sports copy wasn't as easy as she'd anticipated. It was devastatingly _boring. _After several hours of struggling to get the words just right and answering repeated nuisance calls, she took the receiver off the hook, pressed delete, and began again.

_From the second the racket hit the green tennis ball in the Seoul West Arena tonight, the Dragons and Coyotes treated fans to a wild roller-coaster ride of hard hits and white-knuckle suspense. Both teams kept up the frenetic pace until the very end, when the Dragons captain Echizen Ryoma denied the Coyotes win by saving the team with a tie. During the overtime, neither team…_

Along with Ryoma's many saves and hard hits, she wrote about Kirihara's injury and the game he played to put down the rumors of his retirement at an age of thirty-one. It didn't occur to her until after she'd sent the article early the next morning that Ryoma had been watching her in the locker room. As she'd been bouncing around like a pinball, not _everyone _had been ignoring her. Again she felt a disturbing catch in her chest and alarm bells rang in her head, signaling trouble. Big bad trouble with clear amber eyes and legendary fast hands. It was a good thing he didn't like her, and she most definitely didn't like anything about him.

Well, except his tattoo. His tattoo rocked.

Early the next morning, the Dragons dressed in their suits, ties, and battle scars, and headed for the airport. A half-hour into the flight heading for Hong Kong, Ryoma loosened his tie and broke out a deck of cards. Two of his teammates and his coach, Echizen Nanjiroh, joined him in a game of poker. Playing poker on long flights was one of the only times that Ryoma truly felt a part of the team.

As he dealt, Ryoma gazed across the aisle of BAC-111, at the heavy soles of a pair of small boots. Sakuno had pushed up the armrest between the seats and was sound asleep. She lay on her side, and for once her hair wasn't scraped back from her face. Soft brown curls fell across her cheek and the corner of her parted lips. One hand was folded beneath her chin.

"Do you think we were too rough on her last night?"

Ryoma looked up at Oishii Syuichiroh, leaning over the back of his seat. "Nope." He shook his head, then laid the deck on the tray table in front of him. He glanced over his cards and bet on a pair of eights while the guy in the seat next to him, Kikimaru Eiji, folded. "She doesn't belong here," Ryoma added. "If Schneider was going to force a reporter on us, he could have at least picked someone who knows something about tennis."

Momoshiro grinned. "Did you see the way she kept blushing last night?"

They all chuckled as the remaining players discarded. "Man, she got an eyeful of Vlad's wood." He threw down his cards. "One."

Eiji grinned widely. "She saw him?"

"Uh-huh. Her eyes about bugged out of her head."

Ryoma dealt Nanjiroh two cards while he took three. "I don't think she'll ever be the same," he said.

It was a well-known fact that Vlad had an ugly penis. The only man who didn't think so was Vlad himself, but everyone also knew that the Russian had taken a lot of hits to the head. Ryoma bet on three eights and his win was recorded in Nanjiroh's book.

"How long did you keep her up with those calls?" Ryoma asked.

"She finally took the phone off the hook around midnight."

Some silence, then Nanjiroh added.

"That first night I felt a little bad when we all went out and she was sitting by herself in the lobby bar." He confessed.

They all looked at him as if he were nuts. The last thing any of them wanted was a reporter – especially a woman – hanging around when they relaxed and cut loose. Be it in a strip club or nothing more than discussing an opposing team in the hotel bar, everything stayed within the team.

"Well," Nanjiroh backpedaled as he dealt, "I hate to see any woman sitting alone."

"It was kind of pathetic," Eiji added.

Ryomas looked over his cards and placed his bet. "Don't tell me you feel bad too, Eiji?"

"No, she's gotta go." He threw down his cards.

"I'm out for good."

"Too rich for your blood?"

"Nah, I'm gonna kick back and read for the rest of the flight."

Everyone knew that the Cat didn't read anything that didn't have pictures. "Reading is fundamental."

"You got a _Playboy_?" Nanjiroh asked.

"I picked up a _Him_ before we went off, but I haven't been able to get it away from the Chinese Boy,"

He said, referring to Bobby Chin. "He's learning Japanese by reading _The Life of Sweet Sakura_."

They all laughed as they continued with poker. Living in Tokyo especially, a lot of them were fans of Sweet Sakura. They read her column each month to see who she was screwing into a coma and where she'd left the body.

Ryoma shuffled the cards and glanced over at Sakuno sleeping peacefully. No doubt she was the kind of woman who'd get shocked if she saw one of the guys reading porn.

The talk around him turned to the previous night's game. No one was satisfied with the tie, least of all Ryoma. He'd let the tennis ball go past him and the umpire called out the last score during overtime. He'd love to have that one back. Not necessarily because it went past him, but the shot had been more a fluke than a skilled shot. While Ryoma was intensely competitive and hated to lose, he really hated to lose on a fluke rather than a contest of skills.

Ryoma glanced again across the aisle to the woman sleeping like the dead. Her chest moved as her softly parted lips drew breath. Was last night's tie a fluke? A loss in the normal course of the season?" Probably, but he had a lot on his mind these days, and that shot had come a bit too easy. Was his personal life affecting his game? He had yet to hear anything from his personal manager, and the Sayuri situation was still unresolved.

In her sleep, Sakuno pushed her hair from her face. Or was this the beginning of the curse of the woman reporter? Of course, one tie didn't a curse make. But it might be the beginning if they lost this Friday night in Hong Kong.

As if Momo had read his thoughts, he said, "Did you know it was considered bad luck for a woman to board a pirate ship?"

Ryoma hadn't known that, but it made perfect sense to him.

Friday night the Dragons lost in a six-four nail biter with Hong Kong. Saturday morning, as they all were seated in the BAC-111, no one was saying much. Especially after the ass-ream they'd been given in the locker room by Coach Tezuka. The coach had closed the door on reporters and had proceeded to shake the cinder-block walls with his loud tirade. Well, it was actually some daggers from his eyes that scared them while he listed the many mistakes they had done during the game. But he'd said nothing that they hadn't deserved. They'd drawn stupid faults and paid the price.

Ryoma unbuttoned his blazer as Ms. Ryuzaki stepped from the revolving door to his left. The orange sky bathed her in bright morning light, and a slight breeze played with the ends of her ponytail. She wore a black skirt down to her knees, a black blazer and turtleneck. Her shoes were flat and she carried that big briefcase of hers and a to-go coffee. She added to the visual assault by wearing an ugly pair of sunglasses on the bridge of her nose. They were round and green like a fly. She was really into looking sexless.

"Interesting game last night." She set her briefcase on the floor between them and looked up into his face.

"What's with all the dark and black you always wear?"

She glanced down at herself. "I look good in black."

"No sweetheart, you look like the archangel of doom."

She sipped her coffee and said totally urbanely, as if he hadn't hit a nerve , "I could live the rest of my life without fashion commentary according to Ryoma-kun."

"Yeah, but don't wear ugly sunglasses."

"My shades aren't ugly, and my looks is none of your business." She said as she raised her coffee to her lips.

Ryoma felt like strangling her. "So only my business is open for discussion? Your business is off limits?"

"That's right.

He wanted to squeeze her cute face between his hands until she turned red and passed out. "You little hypocrite."

"Yeah, sue me."

Ryoma wanted to shake her shoulders until she pass out of concussion. He glanced down into her face and asked, "How's the coffee this morning?"

"It's fine."

He smirked and damned if he wasn't sexy and annoying at the same time. "Still taking it black?"

She looked up at him from the corner of her eye and placed a hand on the lid. "Yes, thank you very much."

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**Finally! My fourth chapter! I hope that you guys will continue to read my fics and love them also! Don't forget to send reviews. I might change the rating of the next chapters to M. Maybe. Just gimme some warning if it becomes too M-rated. Luv ya!**


	6. Ch5: If I Were a Man

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: I just read my review and I'm quite disappointed at the lack of reviews. Am I asking too much? Hehe, sorry 'bout that. It's good to know when some people like and appreciate my story. Sorry again, I'm getting quite emotional today. Too many paperwork. AND my final exams are coming SOON.  
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**Oh, and for the Sakuno makeover part? Relax, it's gonna come SOON. **

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**CH5: If I Were A Man.**

Sakuno was almost afraid to glance around her. This morning, looking at some of the Dragons was kind of like looking at a train wreck. Horrifying, but she was unable to turn away. She sat near the front of the plane across the aisle from Assistant General Manager Horio Satoshi, a copy of the English-translated _Hong Kong Morning News _opened to the sports page in her lap. She'd sent off her report of the previous night's bloodletting, but she was interested in what the Hong Kong news reporters had to say about it.

Last night, she and the area sports reporters had gathered in the media room waiting for their chance to enter the Dragons' locker room. They'd drunk coffee and cola and eaten some sort of purple concoction, but when Coach Tezuka had eventually come out, he'd informed them all there were to be no post game interviews. During the wait, the Hong Kong journalists had joked with her and shared old-folk stories. They'd even told her which athletes gave them a break and always answered their questions. They also told her which player never answered questions. Echizen Ryoma topped the arrogant-pain-in-the-ass list.

Sakuno folded the paper and stuck it in her briefcase. Perhaps the reporters had been nice because they hadn't seen her as a threat and weren't intimidated by a woman. Maybe they would have treated her differently if they'd been in the locker room competing for an interview. She didn't know and really didn't care. It was just nice to discover that not all male reporters resented her. She was relieved to know that when she wrote one last column about her experiences, she could report that some men had evolved and not everyone viewed her as an assault to their egos.

She'd sent off two columns to the _Tokyo's _now. And she hadn't heard a word from her editor. Not a word of praise or criticism, which she was trying to take as a good sign. She'd seen her first article passed around among the players, but none of them had commented either.

"I read your first column,"

Horio said from across the aisle. In his bare feet, Sakuno estimated Horio to be five foot seven. Five-nine in a pair of cowboy boots. By the cut of his navy-blue suit, she'd guess it was custom-made and would probably cost most people a month's salary. His spiky gelled hair was the color of carrots and although she knew he was about the same age as her, he looked about seventeen. His eyes were intelligent and shrewd, making her kind of nervous.

"You did a good job," he added.

Finally, someone commented on her article. "Thank you."

He leaned across the aisle to give her a few pointers.

"Next time you might want to mention our team's talents."

Horio was the youngest assistant GM in the industry, and Sakuno had read in his bio that he was a member of the Tokyo Actuary Mathematics, TAM club in Waseda University. She didn't doubt it, though she didn't see any correlation between him being a sports manager and a member of the club. Although he appeared to have taken great pains to shake off his nerddom, he hadn't quite been able to give up the pocket protector stuck in his white linen shirt.

"I'll tell you what, Horio-san," she said through what she hoped was a charming smile, "I won't tell you how to do your job, if you don't tell me how to do mine."

He blinked. So much wittiness from such a small package. "That's fair." He finally said.

"Yes, Horio-san. I do think so."

He straightened and placed a leather briefcase on his lap. "You usually sit in the back with the players."

She'd always sat in the back because by the time she boarded, the seats up front had been taken by coaches and management.

"Well, I'm beginning to feel persona non Grata back there," she confessed. The incident of the previous night had made their feelings for her perfectly clear.

He returned his gaze to hers. "Has something happened that I should know about?"

Beyond the nuisance calls, she'd found a dead mouse outside her door last night. It had been very dehydrated as if it had been dead awhile. Obviously someone had found it somewhere and left it for her. Not exactly a horse's head in her bed, but she didn't think it was a coincidence either. But the last thing she needed was for the players to think she was running to management telling tales.

"Nothing I can't handle." She finally said.

"Have dinner with me tonight and we can talk about it."

She stared across the aisle at him. For a second she wondered if he was one of those short guys who just naturally assumed she'd go out with him because she was short too. She once dated a five-seven computer programmer and had the mother of all Napoleon complexes, which she considered quite cute for an old woman but not for a woman her age. The very last thing she needed was a short guy asking her out. Especially a short guy who just happened to be Dragons' management.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want the players to think you and I are involved."

Horio raised his brows. "I have dinner with male sports reporters all the time. Dan Taichi, in fact."

It wasn't the same. She had to be completely beyond gossip. More professional than men. Even though women had been allowed in the locker room for almost three decades now, speculation over women sleeping with their sources was still an issue. She didn't think her credibility or acceptance with the players could sink lower, but she really didn't want to find out.

"I just thought you'd be tired of eating alone," Horio added.

She _was _tired of eating alone. She was tired of staring at the walls of a hotel room or the inside of the team's jet. Maybe someplace very public would be okay. "Just business?" she asked, finally giving up to her need to go someplace cheery.

"Absolutely."

"Why don't we meet at the hotel restaurant?" she proposed.

"Seven sounds okay?"

"Seven is perfect," she said as she dug into her briefcase and pulled out the itinerary. "Where are we staying tonight?"

"Doubletree," Horio answered. "The hotel shakes every time one of those airbuses takes off."

"Marvelous."

"Welcome to the glamorous life of an athlete," he said and leaned his head back.

Sakuno had pretty much already figured out that a four-game grind was just that: a grind. Although she'd already studied it dozens of times, her gaze scanned the itinerary. LA, then Sendai. Just a little over halfway into the road trip and she was looking forward to going home. She wanted to sleep in her own bed, drive her own car instead of ride a bus, and even open her own refrigerator instead of a hotel minibar. The Dragons had four more days on the road before they returned to Tokyo for an eight-day stretch. Then it was off again for Denver and Denmark. More hotels and meals by herself.

Maybe having dinner with Horio Satoshi wasn't such a bad idea after all. It could be enlightening and could break the monotony.

At seven o'clock, Sakuno stepped off the elevators and made her way to the Seasons Restaurant. She'd left her hair down and it fell in soft curls to her shoulders. She wore her black wool pants and black sweater. The sweater opened on the side of her neck and had flared sleeves, and until Ryoma had made that comment about her looking like the archangel of doom, she'd really liked it. Now she wondered if there was some hidden reason beyond her fear of clashing colors that made her gravitate to dark colors. Was she depressed and didn't know it, as Tomoka had suggested? Have some undiagnosed mental disorder? Was she really an archangel of doom, or was Tomoka delusional and Ryoma an arrogant bastard? She liked to think the latter.

Horio waited for her at the entrance of the restaurant looking very young in a pair of khakis, red and orange Hawaiian print shirt, and a new dose of gel in his hair. They were shown to a table near the windows and Sakuno ordered a martini to chase away her fatigue if only for a few hours. Darby ordered a Budweiser and was asked for his ID.

"What? I'm thirty," he complained.

Sakuno laughed and opened the dinner menu. "People are going to mistake you for my son," she kidded him.

The corners of his mouth pulled downward as he pulled out his wallet. "You look younger than I do," he grumbled as he showed the waiter his identification.

As their drinks arrived, Horio started to open up a conversation.

"How's your room?" he asked.

It was just like every other room. "It's fine."

"Good." He took a drink of his beer. "Any problems with the players?"

"No, they all pretty much avoid me."

"They don't want you here."

"Yes, I know." She took a sip of her martini and almost had her sighing like a seasoned alcoholic. But becoming an alcoholic was one thing Sakuno didn't have to worry about, for two reasons. Her hangovers were too painful to ever allow her to turn pro, and when she got tanked her judgment went out the window, sometimes along with her panties.

Sakuno and Horio's conversation turned from tennis to other interests. She learned that he had graduated from Waseda University at the age of twenty-three. He mentioned his membership in TAM three times, and that he owned a five-thousand-square-foot home on some island, a thirty-foot sailboat, and drove a cherry-red Porsche. No doubt about it, Horio was a geek. Not that that was necessarily bad; besides being a fraud, she sometimes felt like a geek herself. To keep up her end of the conversation, she mentioned her undergraduate degrees in journalism and English literature in the University of Washington. WASHINGTON! Horio didn't seem all that impressed.

Their food arrived and Horio looked up from putting butter on his baked potato. "Am I going to end up in your _Single Soul_ column?"

Sakuno paused in the act of placing her napkin on her lap. Most men feared showing up in the column. "Would you mind?"

His eyes lit up. "Hell, no." He thought a moment.

"But it has to be good. I mean, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was a bad date."

"I don't think I can lie," she lied. Half of the stuff in her column was made up.

"I'd make it worth your while."

If he wanted to wheel and deal, the least she could do was listen. "How?"

"I could tell the guys on the team that I don't think you're here to report on the size of their johnsons or strange sexual habits," he said, which immediately made her wonder exactly who had strange sexual habits. Maybe Vlad.

He continued, "And I could assure them you haven't slept with Mr. Schneider to get this job."

Complete horror dropped her jaw, and she raised a hand to her mouth. She'd figured that there might be some small minds in the news-room who'd assumed she'd exchanged sexual favors with Takeyama Hiroshi, because, after all, he was the managing editor and he was just that woman who wrote silly columns about being single in the city. She wasn't a _real _journalist.

But it had never occurred to her that anyone would think she'd slept with Schneider. Good god, the man was old enough to be her grandfather. Sure, he had a reputation for dogging younger women, but she never dated anyone forty years older than herself, even if she had the chance to.

Horio laughed and dug into his beef "I can see by the look on your face that the speculation isn't true."

"Of course not." She reached for her martini and polished it off.

"I'd never even met Mr. Schneider before that first day in the locker room."

The unfairness of it hit her and she signaled for another martini. Usually Sakuno hated to cry 'no fair'. But in this case it really wasn't fair because there was nothing else she could do about it. If she made a fuss and denied it, she doubted anyone would believe her.

"If you write about me in your column, make me sound good, I'll make things easier for you."

She picked up her fork and took a bite of her rice.

"What, are you having trouble finding a date?"

She'd been joking, but by the brilliant blush to his cheeks, she could tell she'd hit a nerve.

"When women first see me, they think I'm a dork."

Sakuno put finger on her chin, being kind enough to say, "Hmm, I didn't think so." She lied, risking the bad karma.

He smiled, and the risk was worth it. "They never give me a chance."

"Well, maybe if you didn't talk about the TAM club and about your advanced degrees, you'd have better luck."

"Think so?"

"Yep." She was halfway through her salmon when her second drink arrived.

"Maybe you could give me some pointers."

Right, like she was an expert. "Maybe."

His shrewd gaze bore into her as took a bite of potato. "I could make it worth your while," he said again.

"I'm getting nuisance calls. Make them stop."

He didn't appear surprised. "I'll see what I can do about that."

"Good, because it's harassment."

"Look at it more as initiation."

Uh-huh. "There was a dead mouse outside my door last night."

He took a wig of his beer. "It could have crawled there by itself."

Sure, a dried out mouse with a missing eye and a shredded tail could have just happened to crawl there by itself. "I want an interview with Echizen Ryoma-kun ."

"You're not the only one. Echizen is a very private guy."

"Ask him."

"I'm not the best person to ask him. He doesn't like me."

She raised her martini to her lips. Ryoma didn't like her either. "Why?"

"He knows I advised against trading for him. I was fairly adamant about it."

That was a surprise. "Why?"

"Well, it's old news, but he was injured ten years ago when he played in Wimbledon. I'm not convinced a player his age can come back from major ACT surgery on both knees. At one time Echizen was good, probably one of the best. But eleven-million a year is a lot to gamble on a thirty-year old man with bad knees. I'm not sure Echizen is worth it."

Suddenly Sakuno felt the obligation to defend the cocky tennis player. "He's having a good season right now," she pointed out.

"So far. What happens if he's re-injured? You can't build a team around one player."

Sakuno didn't know a lot about tennis, and she wondered if Horio was right. Had the team been built around their elite captain? And did Ryoma, who appeared so cool and calm, feel the tremendous pressure of what was expected of him?

It took a frantic call from Nanny Tinsel for Ryoma to learn that Sayuri hadn't been to school since he had left Tokyo. Nanny Tinsel told him she'd dropped Sayuri off every morning, and Sayuri had walked into the building. What he also discovered was that she'd then gone straight out the back. When he'd asked Sayuri where she'd been spending her time, she answered, "The mall."

When he'd asked her why, she'd said, "Everyone at that school hates me. I don't have any friends. They're all stupid."

"Come on, now," he'd said, "You'll make friends and everything will be okay."

She'd started to cry, and like always, he felt bad and totally inadequate. "I miss my mom. I wanna go home!"

After he'd hung up with Sayuri and Nanny Tinsel, he'd called his personal manager, Howie. When Ryoma returned home Tuesday night, several brochures from private schools would be waiting for him in FedEx mailer.

Now the music from the piano drifted to where Ryoma sat in the corner of the lobby bar. He lifted a bottle of Molson's to his mouth and took a long drink. For Sayuri, going home wasn't an option. Her home was with him now, since she hated Nanjiroh, but she obviously didn't like living with him.

He set the bottle on the table and relaxed in the wing chair. He had to talk to Sayuri about boarding school, and he hadn't a clue how she'd respond. He just hoped she didn't get hysterical. The day of her mother's funeral, she'd been beyond hysterical, and Ryoma didn't know what to do for her. He'd patted her back awkwardly and told her he'd always take care of her. And he would. He would see that she always had everything she needed, but he was a piss-poor substitute for her mother.

How had his life become so complicated? He rubbed his face with his hands, and when he lowered them, he saw Ryuzaki Sakuno walking toward him. It was probably too much to hope that she'd walk on by.

"Waiting for a friend?" she asked as she came to stand beside the chair opposite him.

He'd just called Sayuri and wasn't in the mood for one-on-one time. He was thinking he might catch up with some of his team mates at a sports bar downtown. He reached for the bottle and looked at her over the top as he took a swig. He watched her watching him, and he wondered if she was assuming – wrongly – that because he'd been addicted to pain medication in the past he was just as naturally an alcoholic. In his case, one didn't have anything to do with the other.

"Nope. Just sitting here alone," he answered as he lowered the bottle. Something was different about her tonight. Despite the dark clothing, she looked softer, less uptight. Kind of cute. Her hair, usually held back in a controlled ponytail, fell in a tangle of loose corkscrew curls to her shoulder. Her brown eyes were glassy, and her bottom lip appeared fuller and the corners of her mouth were turned up.

"I just finished a dinner meeting with Horio-san," she provided as if he'd asked.

"Where?"

In his suite? That would explain the hair, the eyes and the smile. Ryoma never would have guessed Horio even knew what to do with a woman, much less put that soft dewy look on her face. And he never would have thought Ryuzaki Sakuno, the archangel of gloom and doom, could look so warm and sexy. Damn.

"In the hotel restaurant, of course." Her smile fell. "Where did you think?"

"The hotel restaurant," he lied.

She wasn't buying it, and as he'd come to expect in the short time he'd known her, he wasn't going to let it go either. "Don't tell me you're one of the guys who think I slept with Mr. Schneider to get this job."

"Hn. Not me," he lied some more.

They'd all wondered, but he didn't know how many actually believed it.

"Great, and now I'm sleeping with Horio-san."

He shrugged a shoulder. "None of my business."

As the last strains of the piano died, Sakuno slid into the chair opposite him and blew out a breath. Damn, so much for a little peace.

"Why do women have to put up with this… this… nonsense?" she said.

"If I were a man, no one would accuse me of exchanging…_sex_… for a promotion. If I were a man, no one would think I had to sleep with my sources just to get the story. They'd just slap me on the back and say…" She paused in her rant long enough to lower her voice and her brows at the same time. " 'Good piece of investigative journalism. You're the man. You're the stud.' "

She ran her fingers through the sides of her hair and pushed it from her face. Her sleeves fell back and exposed the thin blue veins of her slim wrist, and the material of her sweater pulled across her breasts. "No one accused _you _of sleeping with Mr. Schneider to get your job."

He lifted his gaze to her face. "That's because I'm the stud."

They all had their crosses to bear, and after the day he'd had, he didn't have the energy to pretend sympathy and understanding. Echizen Ryoma didn't have the time or inclination to worry about a pain-in-the-ass reporter. He had his own damn problems, and one of them was her.

Sakuno looked over the table at Ryoma and crossed her arms over her chest. After the two martinis she'd had during dinner, everything was surrounded by a nice cheery glow. Or at least it had been until Ryoma insinuated that she and Horio were sleeping together.

"If I had a man's sexual reproductive organ," she'd said, "no one would think I was sleeping with Horio-san."

"Don't be too sure about that. We're not altogether sure of the little weasel's sexual orientation." Ryoma reached for his beer and Sakuno's lungs squeezed a little. He'd left the top two buttons of his shirt undone and looked real damn hot, she'd even forgot to mention that Horio had wanted dating tips over dinner. She cleared her throat, and her thoughts.

"How are your knees?" she asked as she rested her forearms on the table.

He raised the Molson's to his mouth and said, "A hundred percent."

"Completely pain-free?"

He lowered the bottle and sucked a drop of beer from his bottom lip. "What? You don't know? I thought you made digging into my past your calling in life."

His conceit was outrageous and a little too close to the truth. For some reason, Ryoma intrigued her more than the other Dragons.

"Do you really think that I don't have anything better to do than to spend my time thinking about you? Digging up a little of the goods on Echizen Ryoma-kun?"

A corner of his mouth lifted. "Woman, there is nothing little about Echizen Ryoma-_kun's _goods."

The Sakuno seventeen years ago would have passed out from the dirty joke. The Sakuno who wrote the _Single Soul _column would dazzle him with her wit. Sweet Sakura would take him by his hand and lead him into a linen closet and check out the truth _aboot _his goods. But Sakuno was neither of those women. The real Sakuno was too inhibited and self-conscious, and she hated a man who made her catch her breath was the same man who looked through her and found her so lacking.

"You okay?" He asked as he placed his bottle on the table.

She blinked. "Yes."

The tips of his fingers brushed hers. It was the slightest of touches, maybe not even quite a touch, but she felt the tingles from it travel through her palm and up her wrist. She stood up so quickly the table rocked. "No. I'm going to my room."

The combination of alcohol, Ryoma's molten mojo, and the grind of the last five days sloshed about in her brain as she looked around for the bank of elevators. For a few seconds she was disoriented. Three different hotels in five days, and suddenly she couldn't remember where the elevators were. She glanced toward the registration counter and spied them off to the right. Without a word, she walked from the lobby bar. This was not good, she told herself as she moved across the hotel lobby. He was overtly male, he made her wrists tingle and her brain go numb.

She stopped in front of the elevator doors, her cheeks hot. Why him? She didn't like him. Yes, he intrigued her, but that wasn't the same as liking him.

Ryoma reached around her from behind and pressed the elevator button. "Up?" he asked next to her ear.

"Y-Yes." She wondered how she would have stood there like a fool before she realized that she hadn't pressed a button.

"Been drinking?"

"Why?"

"You smell like vodka."

"I had a couple of martinis." And she was beginning to regret it.

"Hn." Was his short reply as the doors opened and they stepped into the empty elevator. "Which floor?"

"Three." Sakuno looked down at the toes of her boots, then moved her gaze to his blue and gray running shoes. As the doors closed, he leaned against the back panel and crossed one foot over the other. The hem of his Levi's brushed the white laces. She lifted her gaze up his long legs and thighs, up the bulge of his fly and the buttons of his shirt to his face. Within the cramped confines of the elevator, his eyes stared back at her.

"You look better with your hair down."

The doors opened, saving her a response. She stepped out first and he followed.

"Where's your room?

"Three-twenty-five. Where's yours?"

"Fifth floor."

She stopped. "You got off on the wrong floor."

"No, I didn't." He took her elbow in his big hand moved with her down the hall. Through the material of her sweater, she felt the warmth of his palm.

"When you stood up in the lobby, you looked like you were about to fall over."

"I haven't had _that_ much to drink. Mou." She would have stopped again if he hadn't kept moving her along the blue and yellow carpet. "Are you escorting me to my room?"

"Yep."

She thought of the first morning when he'd carried her briefcase, then told her that he wasn't trying to be nice. "Are you trying to be nice this time?"

"No, I'm meeting the guys in a few and I don't want to have to wonder if you made it to your room without passing out on the way."

As they arrived in front of her room, Ryoma let go of her hand. When Sakuno took out her plastic room key frm her pocket, Ryoma took it from her and opened the door before she could object. "See ya, Ace," he said as he turned away.

Sakuno watched the back of his head and his wide shoulders as he walked down the hall. "See you tomorrow night, Ryoma-kun."

He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. "Planning on going into the locker room?"

"Of course. I'm a sports reporter and it's part of my job. Just as if I were a man."

"Hn. But you're not." _You have breasts instead of a penis._

"I expect to be treated like a man." She damned deserved it.

Ryoma raised a brow. "Then take my advice and keep your gaze up," he said as he turned around once more and walked away. "That way you won't blush and your jaw won't hit the floor like a woman."

The next night Sakuno sat in the press box and watched the Dragons battle it out with the Los Angeles Kings. The Dragons came out strong and put up two wins in both the doubles matches and a win in the first singles play which was, like always, Ryoma. As the umpire called out Ryoma's win, Sakuno breathed out a sigh of relief. The Dragons had won. She wasn't a jinx. At least not today. She would have a job when she woke up in the morning.

She remembered in horrid Technicolor detail the first time she walked into the Dragons' locker room, and her stomach twisted into a big knot as she passed through the doorway. The other reporters were already there questioning doubles player Vlad Fetisov, who stood in front of his stall taking his questions.

"We played well in our own endz," he said as he pulled his shirt over his head. "We took advantage of power playz andz ze court waz quite cool, conzidering the weazer outzide. But it didn't affect our gamez."

Keeping her gaze on his face, Sakuno felt around in her purse for her tape recorder. She brought up the notes she'd been taking throughout the game up to eye level. "Your play allowed Momoshiro-san to deliver five Dunk Smashes," she managed between the other questions. "Are the Dragons looking to acquire a veteran doubles player before the March nineteenth trade deadline?"

She thought the question was quite brilliant, if she did say so herself. Informed and knowledgeable.

Vlad looked through the other reporters at her and said, "That'z question only Coach Tezuka can answer."

So much for her brilliance.

"You scored your three hundredth ace tonight. How does it feel?" she asked. The only reason she knew about the ace was because she'd heard the television reporters talking about it in the press box. She figured a bit of flattery would get a quote out of the Russian.

"Good."

So much for a quote.

She turned and headed down the row of towering men, moving toward Momoshiro, the doubles partner of Vlad. Long johns fell and jocks snapped as if on cue when she walked past. She kept her eyes up and her gaze forward as she clicked on her tape recorder and let it record questions asked by other reporters. Her editor at the _Tokyo's _wouldn't know that she hadn't asked the questions. But she knew, and the players knew it too. Momoshiro had just returned the week before from the injured list and she asked him, "How does it feel to be back in the game and scoring your five Dunk Smashes?"

He looked across his shoulder at her and dropped his jockstrap. "Fine."

Sakuno had had about enough of this crap. "Great," she said. "I'll quote you on that."

She glanced at the stall several feet away and saw Ryoma smirking at her. There was no way she would walk over there and ask him what he was chuckling about.

She just didn't want to know.

* * *

**A/N: ****I noticed some random people telling me that this story's plot is 'eerily' similar to Rachel Gibson's 'See Jane Score'. I thought I've written in the prologue that I did adapt the plot here, - and that this story is my friend's idea, I'm just writing this in her favor - and I assume that some people didn't read or didn't notice that. I'm not implying anything though, it's just that next time read the Author's Note and please, at least, write your name when you send the same critics for like, what, the seventh time. **

**However, thanx anyway for taking the time to review.  
**


	7. Ch6: Tiger

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: Hey, there. Here we meet again. Sorry for the late update. I couldn't update my new chapters because of some errors. I nearly went crazy because of that. And I'm still in the middle of my finals. Thanks a lot for the reviews, those are what kept me going. Oh, and about my oneshot: Harassed By A Friggin Guy... I would like to say that the guy is NOT my kareshi (boyfriend) or whatsoever. Just a close friend. :-) **

**ATTENTION: STARTING FROM NOW ON, ALL OF MY STORIES ARE OF MY OWN IDEAS. I WON'T UPLOAD ANY OTHER FICS THAT U GUYS (I MEAN MY ROOMMATES) CLAIM TO BE YOURS. I SWEAR TO NEVER UPLOAD ANY OTHER FICS THAT I HAVEN'T WRITTEN BY MYSELF CUZ THE ONE THAT'S GETTING THE BLAME ISN'T U GUYS BUT ME. AND IT HURTS.**

**Ehem, sorry 'bout those capital letters, just ignore 'em. I'm seriously kind of ticked off. Okay, so... enjoy? (that was lame... =.=)  
**

* * *

**Ch6: Tiger  
**

Sakuno leaned back against her seat, pushed up her glasses, and studied the laptop resting on her tray table. She'd read what she'd written so far:

_**Tokyo Checkmates Kings**_

_The Tokyo Dragons crowned all five Los Angeles power-play chances and Captain Echizen Ryoma scored 7 – 5 in his match thus bringing back victory over the Los Angeles Kings. The Kings put on quite a match in the last singles of the game when a Cyclone Smash glanced off the racket of the Dragons' well-respected captain. _

_On the courts, the Dragons play a fast, fearless game, aggravating the opposition with skill and brute strength. Inside the locker room they seem to love to aggravate journalists by dropping their pants. I know of at least one reporter who would love to put the 'big hurt' on them. _

An evil smile graced her lips.

Then she shook her head. No. No. NoNoNo.

She reached forward and deleted the last paragraph. It had only been six days, she reminded herself. The players were leery and superstitious. They felt she had been forced on them, and they were right: she had been. Now it was time for them to get over it so she could do her job.

She glanced at the snoring players sacked out in the team jet. How could she earn their trust or their respect if they wouldn't speak to her? How to resolve this issue so her job and her life were easier?

The answer came in the form of Horio Satoshi.

The night they arrived in Sendai, he phoned her room to tell her that some of the players were getting together at a bar somewhere downtown.

"Why don't you come?" he said.

"With you?"

"Yeah, and maybe wear something girly. That way the players might forget you're a reporter."

She hadn't packed anything girly, and even if she had, she didn't want the players to see her as a girly girl. While she needed them to know she respected them and their privacy, they needed to respect her as they would any journalist.

"Give me about fifteen minutes and I'll meet you in the lobby," she said, figuring interaction with the players away from the game might help and couldn't hurt.

Sakuno dressed in a black pencil skirt, a blank tank top, covered by her favorite black cardigan and her favorite black boots. All in black, a contrast with her fair complexion. She looked good in black.

She moved into the bathroom and gathered her hair at the back of her head. She didn't like it hanging in her face, and she didn't want Ryoma to think that his opinion mattered. She looked in the mirror and dropped her hand to the counter. Her hair fell to her shoulders in dark shiny waves and curls.

Suddenly her conscience started to kick in. He'd walked her to her room. He'd thought she was sick or drunk, and he'd walked her back to make sure she got there safely. His one act of unexpected kindness affected her more than it should. That one simple gesture slid within her chest and warmed her heart, no matter if she wanted to be warmed or not. And she didn't. Really?

Even if she were stupid enough to fall in love with a man like Ryoma, with all the emotional and professional ramifications, he would never fall for a woman like Sakuno. And it wasn't because she thought herself uninteresting or unattractive. She didn't. No, she was a realist. Ken hooked up with Barbie, and athletes dated supermodels. That was life. _Real_ life, and she'd never been one to purposely set herself up for heartache. She never wanted to be the one left behind when the relationship was over. She somehow always got out first. It hurt less that way. Maybe Tomoka was right about her. She thought about it a moment and shook her head. Tomoka watched too much Dr. Phil.

Sakuno reached for the brush once more and pulled her hair back. She smeared some lip gloss on her lips, grabbed her purse, and met Horio in the lobby. Upon seeing him, she almost ran the other way. Sakuno knew that she herself was not a fashion goddess, and she didn't try. Horio, on the other hand, was not a fashion god, but he _did _try. Only the results were unfortunate. He wore black leather pants and a silk shirt with red flames and purple skulls on it. Looking at him, Sakuno understood why the Dragons might question Horio's sexual orientation.

They took a cab from the hotel to Small Sendai, a little bar more on the outskirts of the downtown area. The sun was just setting on a cloudless night, and the wind carried a hint of rain and dust. A crisp breeze brushed Sakuno's cheeks as she and Horio exited the cab. A faded sign above the door read, 'Voted Best Japanese-made Ribs.' She almost tripped on the uneven sidewalk and wondered why the Dragons had chosen such a dive.

Inside the building, several television sets hung suspended in the corners, while a string of lights left over from Christmas was still taped to the mirror behind the bar. It smelled of smoke and booze, barbeque sauce and roasted meat. If Sakuno hadn't already eaten, her stomach would have growled.

Sakuno knew that by being seen with Horio, she ran the risk of adding fuel to the rumor that they were dating, but she also figured out she could do nothing about it. And she wondered which was worse, being seen as the lover of a man who dressed like a pimp, or as the mistress of Kevin Schneider, a man old enough to be her grandfather.

Pinball machines pinged and flashed and she recognized two Dragons players playing the virtual guitar and drum in the corner. About three players sat at the bar, watching the Seoul Coyotes battle it out with the Russian Devils. The other four players sat at a table with a pitcher of beer, and Fred Flintstone-sized piles of stripped rib bones.

"Hey, guys," Horio called out. At the sound of his voice, they turned their attention toward Horio and Sakuno. They didn't look too happy to see Horio, and even less happy to see her.

"Ryuzaki-san and I felt like a beer," he continued as if he didn't notice.

He pulled out a chair for her, and she sat next to Kikumaru Eiji and across the Chinese rookie with the Mohawk which was died platinum blond. It really didn't suit with his small eyes. Horio sat to her left at the head of the table. The red flames and the purple skulls were subdued somewhat by the dim lighting.

A waitress with a tight pink T-shirt set two cocktail napkins on the table and took Horio's order. As soon as he uttered the words _Kirin Lager, _he was instantly asked for his ID. A scowl drew his orange brows together as he flashed his identification.

"That's fake," Kikumaru chided in. "He's only twelve."

"I'm a member of TAM, Kikumaru," Horio grumbled and shoved his driver's license back into his wallet.

The waitress turned her attention to Sakuno.

"Bet she orders those wine spritzers," Kirihara said out of the corner of his mouth.

Sakuno looked up into the shadowy face of the waitress.

"Do you have _Tengumai_?"

"Sure do."

"Fabulous." She glanced at the stunned faces around her and smiled.

"A girl's gotta get her daily allowance of malt. Don't you think?"

Kikumaru laughed. "Maybe you should order _Happoushu, _nyaa…"

Sakuno grimaced and shook her head. "Nope. Not strong enough."

She looked across the table at Bobby Chin. The lights from the bar cast a reddish-pink glow in his white-blond Mohawk. She wondered if the young Chinese was twenty-one yet. She had her doubts.

Two more waitresses with tighter T-shirts appeared and cleared and cleaned the table. Sakuno half expected flirting or even a proposition or two – jocks were rumored to be rude toward women – but nothing of the sort happened beside a few polite thank yous. Conversation took place over and around Sakuno and involved nothing more important or more pressing than the latest movie they'd seen and – god please help her – the weather. She wondered if they were trying to bore her to death. She suspected that might be the case, and she could honestly say the most interesting thing going on was the flash of lights on Bobby's scalp.

Oishii must have noticed her attention to Bobby's head because he asked, "What do you think of Bobby's hair?"

She thought she detected a blush on Bobby's cheeks to match the pink tint of his hair. "I like a man who is so secure in his masculinity that he can dare to be different."

"He didn't have much of a choice." Horio explained as his beer and Sakuno's sake arrived.

"He's new to the team this year, and anyone new has to go through initiation."

The Chinese nodded as if this made perfect sense when Sakuno thought it didn't at all.

"My first year," Horio continued, "they emptied their dirty laundry in my Porsche."

The guys around the table laughed, deep ha-ha-ha-has. Except for Kikumaru. His voice was light and he keeps saying 'nyaa' as if he were a cat. She could've sworn she saw a pair of ears perking up from that red hair of his.

"My first season was with the Coyotes and they shaved my head _and _buried my briefs in the ice machine," Sengoku confessed as he joined the group.

Kikumaru sucked in his breath, and she suspected if he might have put a protective hand over his crotch if she hadn't been sitting next to him.

"That's harsh nyaa…" he shivered slightly.

"And I got thrown outside in my underwear a lot. Talk about colder than a well digger's backside." Oishii joined in and shivered to prove his point.

"Wow," Sakuno said and took a sip of her strong sake. Her face remained unchanged as the liquid burned a path down her alimentary canal. Her smile tilted up several notches as she said,

"Now I feel lucky too that you guys just left me a dead mouse and call me all night."

Several pairs of guilty eyes looked at her, then slid away. She didn't mean to make them feel guilty. Really.

"How's your little girl, Sengoku-san?" she asked the orange-haired man sitting next to Bobby, deciding to let them all off the hook – for now.

Just as she suspected he would, he launched into his daughter's most recent accomplishments, which began with potty training and ended with a repeat of the telephone conversation he'd had with his two-year-old earlier that evening.

"Anyone want to play darts?" Momoshiro asked as he approached the table.

Before anyone could speak, Sakuno was on her feet. "I do," she said in an awfully sweet voice. And by the scowl on the Dunker's face, it was clear he'd meant anyone _but _her.

"Just don't expect me to let you win," he said.

Hustling darts had helped Sakuno put herself through college in the states. She didn't expect anyone to _let _her win. She made her eyes go wide as she reached for her drink and took a sip, fighting the twitch threatening her left eye as the liquid scorched her throat.

"Aren't you going to go easy on me because I'm a girl?" she missed the inaudible voice of Ryoma muttering 'bull' and his smirk.

Momo cracked his knuckles, making Sakuno's stomach quiver a bit. He was indeed intimidating her, but she fought to keep her face unchanged. "I don't give quarter to girls."

With her free hand, she took the extra set of darts and headed across the bar. The top of her head didn't even reach his shoulder. The Dunker didn't know it, but he was about to get the big hurt he so richly deserved. Heck with Sakuno's usual sweet demure. That side of Sakuno had long disappeared when she learned to survive in the states.

Scrutinizing the tips of the darts, she asked, "Will you at least tell me the rules?"

Momo quickly explained how to play 501, which, of course, she already knew. But she asked questions like she'd never played before, and he was magnanimous enough to let her go first.

"Thanks," she said as she put her bottle on a nearby table and took her place at the taped toe line.

Nailed to the wall a little over seven feet away, the board was lit from above. She rolled the shaft of the cheap house dart between her fingers, testing the weight. She shrugged and leaned way over the line, held the dart wrong, and glanced down the shaft as if she was sighting a rifle.

At the last second before release, she stopped. "Don't you boys usually bet or something?"

"Yeah, but it's not right for me to take your money. Not right at all…" He looked at her and smiled as if he'd thought up something really funny.

"But we could play for the drinks. Whoever loses has to buy all the guys a beer."

She contrived to look worried. "Oh. Hmm. Well I've got this much," she said as she took out some notes and put them next to her sake. "Is this enough?"

"That ought to be enough," he said, with all the arrogance of a man assured of his own success.

And for the next hour, Sakuno let him think he was winning too. Some of the players gathered around to watch and heckle, but once she was behind by two hundred points and Momo was beginning to feel sorry for her, she got to work and beat him in four turns at the board. Darts were serious business, and she took serious pleasure in trouncing the Dunker. She usually doesn't do that but befriending Tomoka has its consequences.

"Where did you learn to play like that?" he asked.

"Beginner's luck." She downed the last of her drink, which she miraculously sipped little by little without flinching as the strong sake literally melted the epithelial cells lining her esophagus.

Feeling a little ditsy, she asked, "Who's next?"

"I'll take you on." Ryoma stepped out of the darkness like a freaking vampire and took the darts from Momo.

"Watch out, Echizen. She's a hustler." Momo warned the captain.

"Is that right?" One corner of Ryoma's mouth lifted. "Are you a hustler, Ace?"

"Just because I beat Momo-san, I'm automatically a hustler?"

"No. You let poor Momo think he was winning and then you beat him. That makes you a hustler."

Sakuno tried not to smile at the somewhat compliment, but she failed. "Scared, Ryoma-kun?"

"Hardly." He shook his head and a short lock of his dark hair fell across his forehead. "Ready?"

"I don't know," she said. "You're really a bad sport."

"Me?" He placed a hand on the front of his black ribbed sweater, drawing her attention to his wide chest.

"I've seen you whack opponents with the tennis balls."

"I'm competitive. And those balls happen to bounce off." His hand fell to his side. "Not a bad sport."

"Right." She tilted her head and looked into his eyes, a tint of blush coloring her cheeks. She didn't know if it was because of those amber eyes of his or the fact that she was kind of lightheaded.

"Do you think you can stand to lose?" Again she asked with her sweetest voice.

"I don't plan to." He motioned toward the tape line. "Ladies first."

When it came to darts, Sakuno was both competitive and a bad sport. Tomoka had really rubbed off on her somehow. "How much are you willing to bet?"

"I'll put fifty dollars to your yens on that table."

Sakuno raised a brow. "American dollar? Then I need to find a money changer after this."

Ryoma smirked. She really was drunk. "Don't trouble yourself."

"You're on." She pouted, unconsciously making Ryoma somewhat amused.

Sakuno doubled on with her first throw and scored sixty points by the time she was through. Ryoma's first throw bounced back and he didn't double on until his third dart.

"That sucked." With his brows drawn together, he walked to the board and retrieved the darts.

Standing within the pool of light, he studied the tips. "These are dull," he said, then looked across his shoulder at her. "Let me see yours."

She doubted hers were sharper and moved next to him. He took them from her open palm and, with his head bent over hers, tested the points with his thumb.

"Yours aren't as dull as mine."

He was so close, if she leaned forward a little, her forehead would touch his.

"Fine," she said, managing to sound halfway normal, as if the clean scent of him didn't make her breath catch in her throat.

"Pick whichever three you want, and I'll take the others." Sakuno was beginning to feel hotheaded.

"No. We'll use the same darts." He lifted his gaze to hers. "That way, when I beat you, you can't cry."

She looked into his eyes, ignoring the catcalls from the other players watching them by the sidelines. He was so close to her, she felt kind of mesmerized. She smiled. What was WRONG with her?

"I'm not the one who threw a bounce-back on the very first throw, then blamed the darts." She managed to say, failing to stop the sudden huskiness in her voice. And while her heart was thumping, he appeared totally unaffected.

Before she felt all those tingling feelings again, despite her relaxed smiling face, she took a step back. She didn't know what possessed her when she said the next words.

"Now, are you going to talk all night, Ryoma-kun, or are we going to get busy so I can kick your butt?"

Her inner self screamed. _If there is something possessing me right now to say all these wrong words to that impossibly gorgeous man there, I demand you to get out of my body this instant!_

"You're cocky for such a short thing," he said as he slapped the three darts he'd deemed sharpest into her hand. He continued to annoy her by saying,

"I think you have one of those short-girl syndromes." He smirked before joining his other teammates who'd moved to the table several feet away.

She hiccuped a bit and shrugged as if to say, _Yeah, so? _and walked to the line. With her weight perfectly balanced on both feet - despite her being drunk and always clumsy- , her wrist loose and relaxed, she shot a double, a triple, and a single bull. Ryoma strode to the toe line as she retrieved the darts from the board.

"You're right," she said as she walked toward him, "these are much better." She placed all three in his outstretched hand. "Thanks."

His hand closed over hers, pressing the darts into her palm. "Where did you learn to shoot like that?" He asked, fairly impressed at her control even though she seemed really clumsy before.

"At a little bar near the University of Washington." The heat of his hand warmed hers. "I worked there at nights to put myself through school."

She tried to pull away, but his grasp tightened and the shafts dug into her flesh. She wondered if she was really drunk to suddenly not have the strength to pull her hand away.

Ryoma raised a mocking brow. So… little archangel of doom studied in the states. Not bad. "Isn't Hooters around there?" He finally let go of her hand and she took a step back.

She blinked. "No, it's across the lake from the university," she answered, even she figured that he knew.

He's been in the states for quite a period. Her eyes narrowed as she realized he was just trying to rattle her. It wasn't working until he took a step toward her and said next to her ear, "Were you a Hooters girl?"

Despite the heat creeping up her neck, which she knew it wasn't because of the strong sake, she managed a cool and collected, if not quite a Sweet Sakura, response.

"I think it's pretty safe to say I'm not Hooters material." She finished that by a hiccup, and covered her mouth after that. The blush on her cheeks working their charm.

Ryoma suppressed a grin at her cuteness, which he found quite disturbing, but not enough to stop him from lowering his voice, his warm breath touching her cheeks as he asked, "Why's that?"

"We both know why."

He stepped back and looked at her mouth before slowly raising his gaze to her eyes. "Tank top the wrong color?"

"No."

"You don't like the shorts?"

"I'm not the kind of girl they're looking for. And you're talking quite a lot."

Ryoma ignored her. "I don't know if that's true. I've seen some before and they were short." He paused a moment, then added, "Of course, that was in Singapore."

They both knew they weren't talking about her height.

Sakuno tilted her head and suddenly that little beast inside her decided to have the gall to smile sweetly before she said, "You're trying to rattle me so you'll win, aren't you?"

Tiny smile lines appeared in the corners of his mouth as he grinned devilishly. She was really interesting. Or maybe she was drunk. "Is it working, Ace?"

Sakuno shook her head. "Nope," she lied and moved to the sideline where the Dragons stood. "Did you come through with those beers, Momo-san?"

He patted her on top of her head. "Sure did, Tiger."

_Tiger? _Well, at least she'd earned a nickname, and also a pat on the head. Progress, she thought as she watched Ryoma raise his hand, snap it forward, and bury the dart in the bull's eye. For several long moments, Ryoma stood at the toe line, staring the board down as if he were in a contest of wills. Then, as if he was launching a missile, he buried the dart deep in the double twenty for a total of sixty-five points. The scowl pulling at his brow as he strode to her and handed her the darts told her he wasn't satisfied with trailing behind by seventy-five points.

"If they gave points for burying the dart through the board, you'd probably win," she said. "Next time you might want to use finesse rather than muscle."

"I'm not a finesse kind of guy."

"I figured." She moved into position, and just as she was about to release the dart, Ryoma spoke from the sidelines.

"How do you get your hair pulled back that tight?" The others laughed as if he was real funny.

She lowered her arm and looked at him. "There's no trash-talking in darts."

He flashed a smug smile. She pouted. Fine. She'd still beat him. While the other continued to heckle from the sidelines, her three throws equaled an even fifty. Her lowest score so far.

"You're behind by a hundred and sixteen," she reminded Ryoma.

"Not for long," he mumbled and scored a double bull and a single twenty.

Dang. Time for a little trash talk of her own. "Hey, Ryoma-kun. Is that a pumpkin on your shoulders or is that your vacuous head?"

He glanced at her. "My head. Is that the best you can do?"

The rest of the guys seemed equally unimpressed. What the hell.

Darby leaned forward and whispered, "That was kind of lame."

"What the hell is vacuous?" Momo asked.

Horio answered for her. "It means empty or hollow."

"Why didn't you just say that, Tiger?"

Jane frowned and folded her arms across her chest. _Vacuous _was a perfectly good word. "You guys don't like it because it doesn't start with an F."

Ryoma threw his third dart and scored a total of eighty points. Time to quit playing around and get serious. She walked to the line, raised her arm, and waited for the heckling to begin. But Ryoma remained silent, unnerving her more than his insults. She managed to shoot a triple twenty, but when she took him again, Ryoma said,

"Do you wear anything else than black?"

"Of course," she said without looking at him.

"That's right." Then , just as she was about to shoot again, he added, "Your cow pajamas are blue."

"How do you know about her cow pajamas?" one of the guys asked.

Mr. Information failed to answer and she looked over at him, surrounded by his teammates, his hands on his hips and a wicked smirk on his lips.

"The other night I left my room to buy some M&M's," she told them. "I thought you guys were all in bed, so I wore my PJs. Ryoma-kun snuck up on me."

"I didn't sneak."

"Sure." She lined up her shot and threw a double ten.

Then he waited until the exact moment she released her third dart to say, "She wears gay glasses."

She missed the board completely. That hadn't happened in years.

"I-I don't either!" She somehow managed to squeak out. Only when she denied it did she fear she may have objected too vehemently.

Ryoma's wicked smirk turned more devilish if that was even possible. "They're horrible little black squares."

The rest of the Dragons laughed, even Horio said, "Oh, yeah, lesbian, all right."

Sakuno pulled the darts from the board. "They are not. They're perfectly heterosexual."

Geez, what was she talking about? Heterosexual eyeglasses? These guys were making her crazy. She took a calming breath and handed the darts to Ryoma. She would not let these jocks rattle her.

"I'm not gay. Although there is nothing wrong with it. If I were gay, I'd be out and proud."

"That would explain the boots." Momo joined in.

Sakuno looked down at her boots. "What's wrong with my Docs?"

For the first time since she arrived, the Chinese rookie decided to speak. "Maahn shus," he said.

Sakuno was so annoyed that she even translated what he said. "Man shoes?" She looked into his young face, her cheeks turning redder every second. "I even complimented your Mohawk!"

Ryoma moved to the line and scored forty-eight points. When it as her turn again, all the guys decided to take turns rattling her. The conversation turned politically incorrect when they decided, for her, that the reason she wore black had to be because she was _depressed _about being gay.

"I'm _not _gay," she insisted.

She was an only child and hadn't been raised around boys, except her father, of course, but he didn't count. Her father was a serious man who never joked at all. She had no experience with this sort of teasing.

"It's okay, woman," Ryoma reassured her. "If I were a girl, I'd be a lesbian too."

Sakuno figured she had two choices. Get upset and indignant, or relax. She chose to relax and came up with a comeback. She was professional reporter Ryuzaki Sakuno, after all.

"Ryoma-kun, you're already a prima donna," she said. And actually earned a chuckle from him and a laugh from the others.

For the rest of the game, Momo helped her how to trash talk, being that she was already either insane or drunk, she complied. But these guys were much better at trash talking and had had years of practice. In the end, she beat Ryoma by almost two hundred points, but she lost in the war of wits.

Somehow, during all the teasing and trash-talking, she'd moved up a few notches in their esteem. She probably could've done without their opinion on her clothes, shoes, and hair, but at least they weren't talking about the weather. Yes, this was definitely progress. After the game tomorrow night, they might even talk to her. She didn't expect for all of them to become good pals, but perhaps now they wouldn't give her such a hard time in the locker room.

* * *

Bobby had lost focus out there as the opponent rushed to the net and delivered a nicely done drop shot. Ryoma's gaze harden as the ball rolled in front of the bewildered rookie, taunting the captain of their first loss in the season.

The crowds cheered as the umpire called out and announced the win of the Sendai Heroes and the loss of the Tokyo Dragons. Was this it? The first bad game in a downhill slide? A fluke or a trend?

"Everyone has an off night," Coach Tezuka told him in the locker room. "You guys played hard, the opponents were just a tad bit stronger. Don't worry, Echizen."

"None of us played worth a shit tonight," Momo grumbled as he plopped next to Ryoma in the private jet.

As the jet took off from Sendai Airport, he chose to sit in the dark cabin reliving his past, and not the good stuff. The horrible hit to the knees, the surgeries and months of rehab. His addiction to painkillers, the horrible body aches and nausea that rolled through him if he didn't feed it. And ultimately his inability to play the game he loved.

Failure whispered in his ears as he headed home, telling him that he'd lost his edge. The glow of Ryuzaki Sakuno's laptop screen and the _click-clack_ of her keyboard assured him that everyone else would know it too. In the sports section of the paper, he would read her report of that night's disaster.

Moonlight spilled through the eight-foot windows in the living room as he moved through his dark apartment. The light above the stove had been left on, illuminating the FedEx envelope on the counter. He walked into his bedroom and flipped on the light. He left the door partway open and tossed his duffel on the floor by his bed. Shrugging out of his blazer, he hung it next to his garment bag in his closet. He'd unpack tomorrow. Right now, he was tired and relieved to be home, and he wanted nothing more than to fall face first into bed.

He loosened the knot of his tie as Sayuri knocked on his door, pushing it open the rest of the way. She wore a pair of dark blue pajamas and looked about ten years old.

"Guess what, nii-chan?"

"Hey, there." He glanced at his watch. It was past midnight; whatever she wanted, she obviously didn't feel it could wait until morning.

He wondered if she'd managed to get kicked out of school since he'd spoken to her last. He was almost afraid to ask. "What's up?"

Her big amber eyes lit up and she smiled. "I got asked to the dance."

"What dance?"

"The dance at my school."

He pulled the knot of his tie, and thought of the FedEx envelope sitting in the kitchen. He'd deal with it tomorrow. "When?"

"A few weeks."

She might not be living with him in the next few weeks. But she didn't need to know that now. "Who?"

Her eyes lit up even more and she moved farther into the room. "Shiraishi Jimon. He's a senpai."

Shit.

"He's in a band! He's got a lip ring and his nose and eyebrows are pierced. He has a tattoo. He's soooo hot!"

Double shit. Ryoma had nothing against a tattoo. But piercings? Christ. "What band?"

"The Slow Booze."

Great. Thank _you_ Kami-sama.

"I need to get a dress. And shoes." Sayuri sat on the edge of the bed and shoved her hands between her knees.

"Nanny said she'd take me." She looked up, her eyes pleading. "But she's old."

"Sayuri, I'm a guy. I don't know anything about buying prom dresses."

"But you have lots of girlfriends. You know what looks good."

On women. Not on girls. Not on his sister. Not to go to a prom she probably wouldn't be here to attend anyway. And even if she was, not with the Shiraishi of the Loose Screws or whatever they were called. The guy with a lip ring and pierced nose. And sadly, he never had a lot of girlfriends.

"I've never been on a date," she confessed.

His hands fell to his sides and he looked at her closely. Her hair looked more on the dry side. Damn, she needed a mother. A woman to help her. Not him.

"What do boys like girls to wear?" she asked.

Suddenly his father's genes jumped in. _As little as possible, _he thought.

"Long sleeves, high necks and big puffy skirts so we can't get close." He sounded serious and looked serious as he ran a hand through his dark raven hair which she happened to have too.

Sayuri laughed. "That's not true."

"I swear to God it is, Sayuri," he said and pulled the tie from around his neck and tossed it onto the bedside table.

"You're lying, nii-chan."

She laughed again and he thought it was a shame he didn't know her better. She was his only real sibling and he didn't know her at all. And there was possibility he wouldn't even know her at all. A part of him wished things could be different. Wished that he was home more often, and that he knew what she needed. He was beginning to feel like Oishii.

"After school tomorrow I'll give you my credit card. Get what you need and I'll take a look at it when you bring it home."

She stood, her shoulders hunched, a frown pulling at her bottom lip. "Okay… night," she said and walked out of his room.

He made her mad again. Bummer.

* * *

**A/N: Heya! Nice to be writing again. I won't ask anything much, but please do review this story. It's what keeps me going! **

**Terminology:**

_**Kirin Lager**_** – a type of beer**

_**Tengumai**_** – a brand of strong sake. Also known as otoko sake, meaning that the sake is usually drunk by men because it's a strong sake. That was why the guys were surprised a woman drinking a strong type of alcohol. But of course, Sakuno wanted to intimidate them but turned out she wasn't ready for the burning sensation though she managed to chug it down.**

_**Happoushu – **_**a type of weak beer. Normally popular with the women.**


	8. Ch7: Cut and Rejoined

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: Finally, three weeks of exams have finished! Now I'm back to update. Sorry for waiting, so I figured I should make this chappie a long one to mend the emptiness in your heart. Hihihi... Hope you'll enjoy this chap. Oh, and I have an announcement to make at the end of this chapter. Hope you'll read it. It's kinda important.  
**

* * *

**Ch 7: Cut and Rejoined  
**

When Sakuno finally forced herself from bed the next morning, she pulled on her laundry-day underwear and sweatsuit and gave her washing machine a good workout. As the machine washed and spun, she fetched a cherry-flavored Ponta from her fridge, plopped onto the floor and leaned against the washing machine while flipping open 'Memoirs of a Geisha' to catch up with her reading.

There was no place she had to be today. No deadline breathing down her neck. She didn't have anything work-related until tomorrow's night game. She put down her book and grabbed the local newspaper, flipping through the pages until she found the real estate section and checked out properties for sale. With her added income from the tennis columns, she estimated that by summer she'd have enough money saved to put twenty percent down on a home of her own. But the more she looked, the more discouraged she got. Twenty million yen sure didn't buy much these days. She sighed, and continued with her book.

She had today off, but tomorrow the Dragons were playing against the Osaka Black Eagles at the Central Arena. They had home games Tuesday, Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday nights. Three days off after that, then it was back on the road. Back on the jet. Back on the bus and back to sleeping in hotel rooms.

Reporting the Dragons' six-two loss to the Sendai Heroes was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. After she'd trash-talked and played darts with them, she felt a bit like a traitor, but she'd had a job to do. And Ryoma... watching the horror unfold in the court had almost been as bad as watching him sitting on the bench. Staring straight ahead, his handsome features devoid of expression. She'd felt bad for him. For the team. She felt bad that she had to be the one to report the details, but again, she'd had a job to do, and she'd done it.

When she was finished with the last drop of Ponta, her cell phone beeped, indicating an incoming message from Takeyama Hiroshi asking her to meet him the following morning in his office at the _Tokyo's _building. She didn't think the message bode well for her further employment as a sports reporter.

And guess what, she was right.

He fired her.

"We've decided it's best if you no longer cover the Dragons' games. Hiyoshi Wakashi is going to fill in for Dan," Takeyama said.

The paper was letting Sakuno go and handing the job to the change-over freak. The Creeper. The sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.

"W-Why? What happened?"

"I think it's best if we don't get into that."

Bullshit. The Dragons' hadn't played their best games the past week, ending in Bobby's _spectacular_ blowout.

"They think I jinxed them. Don't they?" Sakuno was trying to not grit the words out, but she failed to do so. She was ultimately angry.

"We knew it was a possibility."

She now knew what people say about the feeling you get when you lose ten years of your life.

Sayonara to her chance to write an important article.

Sayonara to twenty-percent down on her own home.

And all because some stupid tennis players thought she was bad luck. Well, she couldn't say that she hadn't been warned or that she was half-expecting it. Still, knowing it didn't make it any easier to take.

"Which players think I brought them bad luck? Echizen Ryoma?"

The man in front of her held up his palms and shrugged. He had the gall to shrug, curse him!

"Let's not get into that," he'd said, but he didn't deny it.

His silence hurt more than it should. Ryoma was nothing to her and surely enough she was nothing to him. Less than nothing. He'd never wanted her to travel with the team in the first place, and she was sure he was behind her getting the boot.

Sakuno pushed up the corners of her mouth when what she really wanted to do was to scream and pull the hair off of Takeyama's already balding head and yell and threaten to sue for wrongful termination or sexism or... or... something. She might even have a case too. But _might _wasn't a good enough guarantee, and she'd learned long ago from her beloved mother and grandmother not to let her temper burn bridges. She still had the _Single Soul _column to write for the _Tokyo's_.

"Well, thank you for the opportunity to write the sports column," she said like a good big girl and shook Takeyama's hand."Traveling with the Dragons was an experience I won't forget."

She kept her smile on her face until she left the building. She was so angry, she wanted to hit someone. Someone with amber eyes and a horseshoe tattooed above his family jewels.

She also felt betrayed, She'd thought she'd made progress, but the players had turned on her. Maybe if she hadn't beat them at darts, and they hadn't called her Tiger, she wouldn't feel so betrayed now. But she did. She'd even felt bad for doing her job and reporting the facts of their last game. And this was how they repaid her? She hoped they get athlete's foot. All at the same time.

For the next two days, she didn't leave her apartment. She was so depressed she cleaned all the cupboards. While she re-caulked the bathroom, she cranked the volume on the television and felt only slightly vindicated when she heard the Dragons lost to the Black Eagles six to one.

Who would they blame now?

By the third day, her anger hadn't diminished, and she figured there was only one way to get rid of it. She had to confront the players if she was to reclaim her dignity. She knew they would be at the Central Arena for the game-day practices, and before she could talk herself out of it, she dressed in her jeans and black sweater and took a train to Ginza. She entered the mezzanine level, and her gaze immediately fell on the empty court. With her stomach in knots, she walked down the steps and headed for the locker room.

"Hello, Sengoku-san," she said as she strolled toward him in the tunnel, a tennis racket in his hand and a water bottle in the other. He looked up as she stopped in front of him.

"Are the guys in the locker room?"

"Most of them."

"Is Ryoma-kun in there?"

"I don't know, but he doesn't like to talk on game days."

Well too damn bad.

The soles of her boots squeaked on the rubber mats in the hallway and heads swiveled in her direction when she walked into the room. She raised a hand.

"Keep your pants up, gentlemen," she said as she moved to stand in the middle of the half-naked players.

"I'll just take a moment of your time, and I'd prefer you not do your synchronized jock-dropping thing."

She turned to face them and stood with her shoulders straight and her head high. She didn't see Ryoma. The rat bastard was probably hiding.

"I'm sure you've all heard that I will no longer be covering Dragons games, and I wanted to let you know that I will not forget our time together. Traveling with you guys was... interesting."

She walked to the Viper, Kaidoh Kaoru, and stuck out her hand. "Good luck with your game tonight, Viper."

He looked at her a moment, as if she made the scary viper a bit nervous. "Ah, thanks," he said and finally shook her hand. "Going to be in the seats tonight?"

She dropped her hand to her side. "No. I have other plans." Plans that include skinning Echizen Ryoma alive.

She turned to face the room one last time. "Goodbye, gentlemen. Good luck, and I hope this year is your turn to win the World Cup."

She even managed a smile before she turned to go. She'd done it, she thought as she walked down the hall. They hadn't chased her away with her tail between her legs. She'd shown them that she had class and dignity and that she was magnanimous too.

She hoped they all got jock itch. Really, really bad jock itch.

She looked down at the rubber mats as she walked into the tunnel, but she stopped short when she came face to a naked chest with sculpted muscles, ripped abs, and a horseshoe tattoo rising out of a pair of navy shorts. Echizen Ryoma. Her gaze lifted up his damp chest to his chin and mouth, up the furrow of his top lip, past his straight nose to the beautiful amber orbs staring back at her.

"Y-You!" she said.

One brow rose slowly up his forehead and her temper exploded.

"You did this to me," she said. "I know you did. I guess it didn't matter to you that I actually needed that job. You guys screw up in the courts and _I'm _out."

She felt the backs of her eyes sting and made her all the madder. "Who did you blame your loss on last night? You... you...," she stammered.

One rational part of her brain told her to shut up, to quit while she was ahead. To just walk around him and leave while she still had her dignity.

Too bad she was far too gone to listen to that part of her brain.

* * *

"You called him a big dumb kabocha?" Tomoka asked later that night as the two of them sat on Sakuno's couch watching the fireplace lick the fake logs. "Why didn't you go for broke and call him a poo-poo head too?"

Sakuno groaned. Hours later she was still writhing with embarrassment. "Don't, Tomo-chan," she pleaded and pushed her glassed up the bridge of her nose.

"The only consolation I have is that I will never see Ryoma-kun again." But she didn't think she'd ever forget the look on his face.

Kind of stunned surprise, followed by the twist of his lips into the most sensual smirk. She'd wanted to die there, but she couldn't even blame him for teasing her with that smug smile of his. He probably hadn't been called a kabocha since kindergarten. He might have never been called a kabocha before.

"Baka Sakuno," Tomoka said as she raised a glass of wine to her lips.

She'd pulled her shiny red hair back into a perfect ponytail and, as always, looked gorgeous.

"I thought maybe you could introduce me to Kaidoh Kaoru."

"The Viper?" Sakuno shook her head a bit too vigorously and took a sip of her warm tea. "His eyes are scary. It feels like having a staring contest with a snake. And you'd know you'd lose."

Tomoka smiled and got a little dreamy-eyed. "I know."

"He's scary. And doesn't smile." Neither Ryoma. That captain smirks. He does not smile.

"Someone else?"

Sakuno raised a brow as she stared at her tea. "I thought you had a new man."

"I do, but it's not going to work out."

"Why?"

"I don't know..." Tomoka said through a sigh and put her wine on the cherrywood coffee table. "Kantaro-san is handsome and rich but sooo boring."

Which Sakuno knew she meant the man was probably normal and didn't need fixing. Tomoka was a born fixer-upper.

"Do you want to turn on the game and watch it?" Tomoka asked.

Sakuno shook her head. "Nope."

She'd been tempted, real tempted, to grab the remote and surf by the game to see who was winning. But that would only make everything worse.

"Maybe the Dragons will lose. That might make you feel better."

It wouldn't.

"No." Sakuno leaned her head back on the beige sofa. " I don't ever want to see a tennis game again."

But she did. She wanted to be in the press box or a seat near the action. She wanted to feel the energy run through her, watch a flawless play, or watch Ryoma serving his famous Twist Serve.

"Just when I thought I was making progress with the team, I get the sack. And that night I didn't get nuisance calls to my room. I know we weren't friends but I thought they were beginning to trust me and accept me into the pack."

She thought for a while and added, "Like wild dingos."

Tomoka glanced at her watch. "I've been here fifteen minutes and you haven't gotten to the good stuff."

"I thought you came over to cheer me up, but you just want to hear about the locker room." Sakuno said through a pout.

"I did come to cheer you up." The red-head turned toward Sakuno and laid an arm across the back of the sofa. "Later."

It wasn't as if she owed them any sort of loyalty anyway. Not now. And it wasn't as if she were going to put it in a tell-all book.

"Okay," she said, "but it wasn't like what you're thinking. It wasn't all really hard bodies and me the only woman. Well.. it was, but I had to keep my eyes up and every time I walked past a player he dropped his towel."

"You're right," Tomoka said as she leaned over and plucked her wine off the table. "It isn't what I was thinking. It's better."

"They're all sweaty and flushed and they don't want to talk. You ask them a question, and they just sort of grunt out an answer." Which was no use for her column.

She once considered writing: _I asked the players about the win they managed to earn after a hard battle against the Americans, and most of them answered "Hn.", which meant "It's very thrilling." in grunt-code. Well readers, according to my observation, the players have developed a Morse-Code-like language between themselves and seem to develop some kind of vocabulary referring to the way they grunt. _

"Souns like my last two boyfirends during sex." Tomoka chuckled as she said that.

That caught Sakuno off guard and made her blush.

"I-It wasn't like sex, believe me."

Tomoka waved a dismissive hand. "So, who has the best body?"

Sakuno thought a moment. "Well, they are all incredibly built. Powerful legs and upper bodies. Momoshiro-san probably has the biggest muscles, but Ryoma-kun has this tattoo on his abs..." she blushed, and with a slight frown she muttered, "Too bad he's a jerk."

"Sounds like you like him."

Sakuno's cheeks turned scarlet as she whipped her head towards Tomoka. Like him? Like Ryoma? The guy who got her fired? More than all the other players combined, she felt most hurt and betrayed by Ryoma. Which, when she thought about it, probably wasn't all that rational, since she didn't really know him and he didn't know her. It was just that she'd thought they'd developed a tentative friendship, and if she was honest, she'd admit that she'd developed a slight infatuation for Ryoma. No, _infatuation _was too strong a word. _Interest _better described what she'd felt.

"I don't like him," she said, "but he does have a strange accent to his words, maybe because he didn't grow up here."

"Uh-oh."

"What, uh-oh? I said I didn't like him." That kabocha.

"I know what you said, but you've always been a sucker for men with an accent."

"Since when?"

"Since you met Tooyama Kentarou in junior high."

"No, I was smitten with Aoi Kentarou-kun"

Tomoka rolled her eyes. The way Sakuno was, it was like she was saying she preferred cats over felines. "He has an accent too."

Sakuno raised a perfect brow. "Really?"

Tomoka took a drink of her wine. "Even back then you were attracted to losers."

Sakuno frowned as she put down her tea. "I call it having realistic expectations."

"More like selling yourself short because you have typical abandonment issues."

"Are you high on something?"

Tomoka shook her head and her ponytail brushed her shoulders. "No, I read it in a magazine last week. Because your mother died, you're afraid everyone you love will leave you."

"Which goes to show, dear Tomo-chan, there's a lot of made-up tales in magazines." And she should know.

"Just last week you told me I had issues with leaving a relationship because I have a fear of getting dumped. Make up your mind."

"Obviously it's the same thing." Tomoka shrugged.

Sakuno sighed. She was tired. "Right."

They watched the fireplace for a few more minutes, then Tomoka suggested, "Let's go out."

They both stood up and Sakuno headed to her room to brush her hair, when Tomoka added, "Oh, put your contacts in."

Sakuno adjusted her glasses. "Why?"

"Well, I didn't want to say anything because I love you and all, but those horrid people at Eye Care lied to you."

Sakuno didn't think her glasses were that bad. Hamasaki Ayumi had a pair just like them. "Are you sure they don't look good on me?"

"Yes, and I'm only telling you this because I don't want people to think I'm the girl and you're the boy."

Not Tomoka too.

* * *

The next morning at nine o'clock, Sakuno's telephone rang. Itwas Takeyama Hiroshi phoning to tell her that he and Schneider and the Dragons' management had reconsidered their 'hasty decision'. They wanted her to resume her job ASAP. Which meant they wanted her in the press box for tomorrow night's game against St. Rudolph High School. She was so shocked, she could only lie in her bed and listen to Takeyama's complete about-face. It seemed that after her talk with the team, they'd all played brilliant tennis. Kaidoh had managed to deliver three consecutive successful Boomerang Snakes without injuring his arm after she'd shaken his hand, and Ryoma completed a new move which he'd been working on for months. They'd finished the match at six-zero.

Suddenly Ryuzaki Sakuno was good luck.

"I-I don't... know, Takeyama-san," she said as she threw aside her yellow duvet and sat on the edge of her bed.

Her head and mouth felt as if they were stuffed with cotton, a result of too much late-night fun, and she was having a hard time grasping her thoughts. "I can't take this job and wonder if I'm going to get fired every time the Dragons lose a game."

"You don't have to worry about that anymore."

She didn't believe him, and if she did decide to take the job again, she wasn't going to jump at the opportunity like last time. And truthfully, she was still severely ticked off.

"I'm going to have to think about it."

After she hung up the phone, she brewed a pot of coffee and ate a little granola to take away the hollow feeling. While she ate, she thought about Takeyama's new offer. The Dragons had pretty much treated her like a leper and blamed their losses on her. Now they suddenly thought she was good luck? did she really want to subject herself to more of their superstitious craziness? Their synchronized towel-dropping and nuisance calls?

When she finished eating, she jumped into the shower and closed her eyes as the warm water ran over her. Did she really want to travel with a player who could look right through her? Even as he made her heart race? Whether she wanted it to race or not? And she most definitely did not. Even if she and Ryoma liked each other, which they obviously don't, he only had eyes for tall gorgeous women.

She wrapped her hair in a towel as she dried her body. She pulled on a sheer bandeau bra, a white Hello Kitty T-shirt, and a pair of old jeans with holes in the knees. Her doorbell rang, and when she looked at the intercom, a man wearing a pair of Oakley sunglasses stood on her little porch all windblown and gorgeous, and looking exactly like Echizen Ryoma. She opened the door because she'd just been thinking of him, and she wasn't certain this wasn't a figment of her imagination.

"Konbanwa, Ryuzaki." He greeted with a slight nod of his head.

Wow, a polite Ryoma. Now she _knew _she was imagining things. "Y-Yes?"

He took off his sunglasses and those amber orbs were prettier than she remembered. "I'm here about your job."

That did it. He said _aboot _instead of about, and she knew she was talking to the real Ryoma.

"You getting me fired, you mean?"

He tucked his sunglasses in the pocket of his leather jacket and shrugged. "I didn't get you fired. Not directly anyway." When the cute angel of doom didn't respond, he asked, "Are you letting me inside?"

Her hair was in a towel and the cold airwas giving her goose bumps. She decided to let him in. "Have a seat," she said as he followed her into the living room of the apartment. She left for a moment to take off the towel from her head and to brush the tangles from her hair. For a moment she thought of maybe putting on some mascara and lip gloss. But she dismissed the thought just as quickly. Of all the men in the world, Ryoma was the last man she'd thought would ever be standing in her living room. And she didn't want an arrogant man like Ryoma to know she wanted to impress him. So she settled with her damp hair that stopped just above her shoulders and without her glasses that he claimed ugly.

With her hair damp and the ends starting to curl, she returned to the living room. Ryoma stood with his back to her, studying a few photographs sitting on her mantel. Hisjacket lay on the sofa, and he wore a white long-sleeved colarless shirt, the sleeves folded up his forearms. The untucked shirt had its hem resting just below the back pocket of his black khakis. He looked over his shoulder at her, his amber gaze moving from her bare feet, up her jeans and T-shirt to her face. He noticed she wasn't wearing those horrid glasses.

"Lesbo glasses?" he asked, earning a frown from Sakuno.

"My eyes aren't that damaged, just mild astigmatism." She answered, trying very hard not to stutter. The nerve of him calling her loyal glasses 'Lesbo'.

The faintest of smiles tugged the corner of his mouth, and disappeard just as quickly as it came. "Who's this?" he asked and pointed to the middle photo ofher and Tomoka in their caps and gowns standing on the porch of the temple her father was guarding.

"That's my best friend Tomoka and me the night we graduated from Rikkaidai High School."

"You've lived here all your life?"

"Yep."

"You haven't changed that much." He mumbled.

She stood next to him. "I'm older these days."

He looked across his shoulder at her. "How old are you?"

"Thirty."

He flashed a smile - well, more like a smirk, but with more watts to it - that slid past her defenses, warmed her up, and curled her toes into the brown Berber carpet.

"That old? You look pretty good for your age."

_Oh, god._ She didn't want to read more into that statement than he'd intended, which she was certain was absolutely nothing. She didn't want him to dazzle her with a smirky smile, whatever that meant, nor she didn't want to feel tingles or warm flushes or have bad, bad sinful thoughts.

"Now, why are you here, Ryoma-kun?"

"Horio called me. He told me they'd offered you your job back and you turned them down."

She hadn't turned them down,. She'd said she'd thinkabout it. "And what does that have to do with you?"

"Horio thought I could talk you into coming back."

"You? Ryoma-kun? You think I'm the archangel of gloom and doom."

"You're a cute one."

_Oh, boy. _"You were the wrong wrong choice. I-I don't - " she stopped because she couldn't lie and say she didn't like him. She did. Even though she didn't _want _to like him. So she settled on a half lie.

"I don't know if I even like you."

The chuckled as if he knew she lied. "That's what I told Horio, but he thought I could change your mind."

Her eyes narrowed. "I doubt it."

"I figured you might say that." He walked to the couch and pulled something out of the pocket of his leather jacket. "So I brought you a peace offering."

He handed her a thin trade-sized paperback with a pink ribbon tied around it. _Tennis Talk: The Stuff You'll Never Learn From TV._

Shocked, she took it from him. "You did this?"

"Yeah, and I had the girl put that bow on it. They didn't have black though. Sorry."

He'd given her a gift. A peace offering. Something she could actually use. Not something generic men typically gave women, like flowers - although she preferred them too - or like chocolate or cheap lingerie. He'd given it some thought. He'd paid attention. To her. Sakuno's heart pinched in her chest and she knew she was in trouble.

"Thank you." Was the whisper she managed to breathe out.

"You're welcome."

She looked up past his smile and into his amber eyes. She was in big bad trouble.

* * *

Ryoma looked down into Sakuno's brown eyes, and he knew his gift had worked. He'd softened her up, maneuvered her right where he wanted. But just before he had her completely like a racket from heaven, her gaze turned wary. She took a step back and skepticism pulled her brows together.

"Did Horio-kun tell you to butter me up with this?" she asked and held up the book.

Damn. "No." The little dweeb had suggested he bring her flowers, but the book had been Ryoma's idea.

"That was my idea, but everyone wants you to come back and cover the games."

"I find it hard to believe that everyone wants me back. Especially management."

She was right. Not everyone did want her back, especially some guys from management. After the disgraceful loss in Sendai, the team had been looking forsomething to blame. Something in the air or the alignment of the stars. Something other than their pathetic performance. And that something had been Sakuno. They'd groused and bitched in the locker room, but none of them had thought she'd get fired. Especially Ryoma. After she'd told him she'd needed the job, he'd been ableto think of little else but Sakuno living on the streets because of something he'd said. And looking at her apartment, she probably did need the money. It was clean, and, surprisingly enough, not everything was black, but the whole thing could fit into his living room and kitchen fused together.

Sakuno looked down at her feet and Ryoma studied the part in her damp hair. The ends had begun to curl slightly about her shoulders as if she'd twisted them around her finger. He suddenly wondered what they'd feel like curled around his own finger. Not for the first time he noticed her nipples poking at the front of her T-shirt, and again he wondered if she was cold. He felt himself getting aroused and was surprised as hell at his response to Ryuzaki Sakuno. She was short and flat-chested and too damn smart. Despite all of that, he found himself say,

"Are you going to take your job back?"

She walked into the kitchen with Ryoma following but he stopped in the doorway of the kitchen. Sakuno set the book he'd given her on the counter and poured coffee into a dark green mug. "I might."

She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a quart of milk. After pouring some into her mug, she put it back into the refrigerator. The door has Post-its stuck all over.

"How much is it worth, Ryoma-kun?"

"To me personally, or the team?"

She raised the mug to her lips and looked across at him. "You personally."

Ryoma knew she wanted something by taking advantage of the reversal of circumstances. She was going to squeeze it for all it was worth. He couldn't say he wouldn't have done the same thing if he was in her situation.

"I gave you a peace offering."

"I know, and I appreciate the gesture."

She was good. Maybe he'd fire Howie and hire Sakuno to negotiate his next contract. "What do you want?"

"An interview."

He folded his arm across his chest. "With me?"

"Why, how clever of you."

"When?"

"After I've had time to do some research and get my questions together."

His mouth gave a scowl. "You know I hate interviews."

"I know, but I'll make it painless."

He rocked back on his heels and looked down at the front of her T-shirt. "How painless?"

"I won't ask you personal questions. I won't ask you about your women."

He slid his gaze to the delicate hollow of her throat, past her lips to her eyes. "Some of that stuff you've probably read about me isn't true. At least fifty percent was bull."

From behind her coffee, one corner of her mouth lifted. "Which fifty percent is true?"

She looked so cute looking up at him, smiling, he was almost tempted to tell her. Well, almost. "None of your business."

"It's okay, because I don't want anything you tell me to blow my illusions of you."

"What illusions? That I have threesomes every night?"

"You don't?"

A dark brown rose. "No."

He decided to shock her a bit. "Vlad tried once, but the girls were more interested with each other, which didn't do much for his self-esteem."

Sakuno started to laugh and he couldn't remember the last time he'd been talking to a woman or hearing her laugh sincerely. It was kind of nice.

* * *

**A/N: Okay, guys. I have an important announcement to make. Remeber the author: Rokugo? Well, that's my cousin. People call her my twin cousin cuz we were born on the same day. Well, since she sort of gave up on her story: Be My Daddy, I decided to ask her permission to continue her stroy, AND she had no qualms about me editing most of the storyline. But it won't be that soon, cuz I still have Game and Match to finish and also another seven-chaptered RyoSaku story to be submitted in a contest. But I will take over Rokugo's story and hope that it will be as good as I expect it to be. Bye!**

**Terminology:**

**_Kabocha -_ pumpkin.  
**


	9. Ch8: Gift from Heaven

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: Yah, minna-san! It's been a while ne? kikiki… Sorry 'bout the late update. I was too busy and didn't have the time to write the new chapters for this story. Well, here's the eighth chapter. Hope ya guys like it, cuz this is where Sakuno's makeover begins. Hm… what kind of makeover? Just wait and see. I'll definitely won't disappoint you. C'mon, this is ME we're talking about! AHAHAHA!**

**Tomo-chan: Shorty, arrogant much?**

**Me: Wow, look who's talkin' there. :P**

* * *

**Ch8: A Gift from the Heaven.**

The night after Ryoma's visit, Sakuno sat next to Horio in the press box for the Dragons – Whales game. It was half an hour until the first match began, but Sakuno was ready with her recorder and her precious camera in hand. She was back and more excited than she was before. Except for Horio, management had yet to arrive; she wondered if they'd give her the cold shoulder. She looked across at him.

"Thanks for getting my job back for me."

His forearms rested on his knees as he gazed out at the arena. Tonight he'd applied a little less hair gel than usual, but beneath his blue suit jacket, he wore his trusty pocket protector.

"It wasn't just me. The players felt bad after you came to the locker room and wished them luck. They thought anyone that gutsy should have her job back."

"I thought they wanted me back because they think I'm lucky now."

"That too," he said through a smile as he gazed at the tennis court below. "What are you doing next Saturday?"

"Aren't we on the road?"

"No, we leave the next day."

"Then nothing." She shrugged. "Why?"

"Yukimura Seichi is having his retirement party at a big banquet at the Spinning Saucer."

Yukimura Seichi? That name sounded familiar.

"Who's Yukimura Seichi-san?"

"Dragons' captain before Echizen took his place. I was wondering if you'd want to go."

Sakuno's brows shot up. "With you? O-On a… date?" she asked as if he were crazy.

His cheeks flushed, and she realized that had come out all wrong.

"It doesn't have to be a date," he said from the corner of his mouth.

"S-Sorry, I don't mean that like it sounded." She patted his shoulder through his jacket. "You know I can't date anyone involved in the Dragons organization. It would cause more speculation and rumor."

"Yeah, I know."

Now she felt really bad. He probably couldn't get a real date to go with him, and she'd added insult to injury.

"I suppose I'd have to dress up then."

"Yes, it's black tie." He finally looked at her. "I'd pick you up in a limo, so you won't have to drive."

How could she possibly say no? "When?"

"Seven." The cell phone hooked to Horio's belt rang and he turned his attention to the call.

As Horio answered the call, Sakuno began thinking of what to wear. Maybe a new affordable black dress? Black again. She sighed. She really didn't want to impress anyone, but she thought she didn't want to assault anyone by wearing a dress with her flat-soled boots. Maybe, she would ask for Tomoka's help? She made a move to call Tomoka when Horio glanced at her, a deep frown on his forehead.

"Ryuzaki-san? Right now? Okay."

Sakuno already had her cell phone to call Tomoka when Horio spoke to her.

"Coach Nanoji wants you in the locker room."

She blinked. "Nanoji?"

Horio rubbed his nape. "Echizen Nanjiroh-san."

Oh, the Ryoma-look-alike coach. "Me? Why?"

Horio shrugged. "He didn't say."

Sakuno stuffed her camera and recorder in her bag and headed out of the press box. She took the elevator to the ground level and moved through the hall to the locker room, wondering the whole time if she was about to get fired again; if she was, she feared that this time she just might go ballistic.

When she walked into the room, the Dragons were all suited up and imposing in their battle gear. They sat in front of their stalls listening to Coach Tezuka with Coach Nanoji standing next to the stoic-faced coach, and Sakuno stopped just inside the door as Coach Tezuka talked of the weakness of the Whales' players especially the doubles players. She looked across the room at Ryoma. He wore his red and black jersey with the word 'Dragons' written in kanji on the left breast and his white cap covering his raven locks. He was staring at a point just beyond his shoes. Then he looked up and his eyes locked with hers. He simply looked at her for several heartbeats, then his amber gaze began a leisurely journey down her gray sweater, over her black skirt and tights to her black penny loafers.

"Ryuzaki-san," Coach Nanoji called to her.

She pulled her attention from Ryoma and looked at the coach. He motioned her forward, and moved to stand beside the older coach.

"Go ahead and say what you said to the guys the other day."

She swallowed. "I can't remember what I said, coach."

"Something about us keeping our pants up," Sengoku popped behind Ryoma.

"And traveling with us being an experience." Eiji appeared next to her in a flash.

They all looked so serious she almost laughed. Until now, she'd never really believed they were this superstitious.

"Okay," she began to the best of her recollection, "keep your pants up, gentlemen, I have something to say and it will just take a minute. I won't be traveling with you any longer, and I wanted you to know that traveling with you all has been an experience I won't forget."

They all smiled and nodded except the one and only hyper Eiji.

"You said something about synchronized jock-dropping. I remember that part."

"That's right, Tiger," Momoshiro agreed, his face couldn't be any more than serious.

"And you said you hoped this was our year to win the World Cup," Kirihara Akaya added, surprisingly.

Kaidoh, being silent the whole time, decided to nod. "Yeah, that's important."

Did it really matter? Sheesh! She was sure she would come out of the locker room with her hair sticking out at different angles. "Do I have to start from the beginning?"

Their collective nods caused her to roll her eyes.

"Keep your pants up, gentlemen, I have something to say and it will just take a minute and I don't want any of that synchronized pants-dropping nonsense." Or something like that.

"I won't be traveling with you any longer and I wanted you to know that traveling with you guys has been an experience I won't forget. I hope this year is your year to win the World Cup."

They all looked pleased; especially Momo, Eiji and Oishi, and she started to leave before they made her crazy.

"Now you have to shake my hand," the scary Viper, Kaidoh, informed her.

"Oh, that's right." She walked up to him and took his hand. "Good luck with the game, Kaidoh-san."

"No, you said Viper."

This was just weird. Nevertheless, she managed to put up a smile. "Good luck with the game, Viper."

He nodded, his face all serious. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." From outside, she could hear the pre-game entertainment begin, and she once again headed for the door.

"You're not finished, Ace."

She turned and looked across the room at Ryoma. He stood and crooked a finger at her.

"Come here."

No way.

No way was she going to call him a big dumb kabocha in front of the guys.

"Come on."

She looked around at the faces of the other players. If Ryoma played badly, they were going to blame her. As if her shoes were made with lead, she walked across the locker room with the Dragons logo in the center.

"Wh-What?" she asked as she came to stand in front of Ryoma.

She forgot how tall he was, and how nice he smelled. _Where did that come from, Sakuno? _She blinked to shake off her inner voice.

Sakuno looked up into Ryoma's face.

"You have to say what you said to me the other day."

That was what she'd suspected, but she tried to get out of it. "You're so good, you don't need luck."

He grasped her arm and gently pulled her closer.

"Come on, now."

His heated palm warmed her through her sweater.

"D-Don't make me," she said just loud enough for him to hear. She could feel her face catch on fire. "It's too embarrassing."

He ignored her and bent over her. The scent of his shampoo and shaving cream filled her nose as he neared his ear to her mouth. She shut her eyes to prevent herself from losing control.

"You big dumb kabocha," she whispered beside his ear.

"Thanks, Ace. I appreciate it."

_Ace. _He always called her that. She opened her eyes. He turned his face, and with his lips inches from hers, he smirked.

"Am I going to do this before every game?" she managed to say, though her voice sounded more breathy than she would have liked.

He didn't seem to notice her voice though. He straightened and smile lines appeared in his cheeks as his mouth turned up into a mocking smile.

"I'm afraid so."

Finally, she felt as if she could breathe again. "I'm asking for a raise, Ryoma-kun."

He adjusted the brim of his cap, and slung his tennis bag onto his shoulder. His hand patted her head, slightly messing her single-braided hair.

"Then ask Mr. Schneider."

With that last pat, he left her in the locker room. She pouted and smoothed her hair. As she looked at his disappearing figure, she blushed. Ryoma had gently brushed his thumb against the end of her braid before he walked away. The way Ryoma treated her was nothing she'd ever experienced with a guy before. Because she was used to hanging out with Tomoka and her other girlfriends, she was never treated the way Ryoma did to her.

It was as if he'd made her feel noticed. As if he actually had the time to take notice of her ugly boots, her stuttering problem and her braided hair.

She gasped and quickly walked out of the locker room to the mezzanine level. Horio blinked at her as she hurriedly snatched her bag and rushed down the stairs to the seat directly behind the Dragons' side of waiting benches. She grasped her camera tightly as the first doubles pair walked into the court.

As she poised to snap the first picture, she realized.

She had fallen for Ryoma.

The rude, arrogant, charming Ryoma.

And she knew she was going to be in deep trouble for falling for him, hard.

* * *

That night, when Sakuno sent her column off to the paper, she phoned Tomoka and made her friend's day, week, and year with four simple words.

"I need a makeover," she said as soon as Tomoka picked up.

"Who's this?"

"Very funny, Tomo-chan. I have this fancy banquet to go to next week and I need to look… good, I think."

"Thank you, Kami-sama, for this gift I'm about to receive," Tomoka whispered.

"I've waited for this for years, Sakuno! The first thing we need to do is make an appointment with Ann-chan, and the Eye Care people for those glasses of yours."

"Who's Ann-chan?"

"The woman who's going to wax you all over and shape that wild hair."

Sakuno looked at the receiver in her hand. "Wax?"

"And hair."

"Tomo-chan, the last time I let you do my hair, I ended up looking like Aka no Ou."

"That was years ago, and _I _won't be doing it. After the hair, we'll hook you up with Kana-chan for your clothes. The woman is a true artist!"

"I-I was thinking of a nice black cocktail dress and some cheap pumps."

"And we got in some fabulous Ferragamos today," Tomoka rattled on as if Sakuno hadn't spoken. "In red. They'll look perfect with a killer little red dress I saw in the upstairs department."

* * *

Ryoma pulled the cuffs at his wrists, then slipped onyx studs through each. That morning at practice, he'd heard Sakuno would be at tonight's banquet with Horio. He was curious to see what she'd show up wearing – something black, no doubt. He noticed that she was beginning to change her hairstyle. The day when she'd walked into the locker room with a single braid running down between her shoulder blades and stopped in the middle of her back, he'd noticed that her hair had grown. The braid reminded him of his late mother – but Sakuno was different, the archangel of doom was actually cuter- , and he couldn't seem to help himself from calling her to him.

He also couldn't stop himself from patting her head.

He'd never touched her hair before, and the soft brown silky texture on her head made him wanting to touch her silky locks more often.

It wasn't something sensual. It was just hair. But somehow, he couldn't help himself from being drawn towards her that much after touching her hair.

He sighed.

He was a sucker and he was losing himself.

Ryoma grabbed his black bow tie and moved to his closet's mirrored doors. He laid it flat against his collar and threaded one end beneath the other, wondering if Sakuno and Horio were dating now. He didn't think they were. At least he didn't _like _to think they were. Sakuno was gutsy and had a smart mouth, and a geeky Horio was all wrong for her. He guessed that was what he liked about her. She didn't run from adversity. She faced it head-on. All five feet of her. As he secured the tie, his lips turned up a little bit. She sometimes stuttered too, and blushed a lot.

He grabbed his watch from his bedside table and slipped it on his wrist as he made his way to Sayuri's room. Ryoma knocked on her door, and when she mumbled a reply, he entered the room. He expected to see her in the black velvet dress with the square neck and little pink roses sewn on it. She'd shown him the dress the other day, and he'd thought it real appropriate for a girl her age. Instead of being dressed, though, she was lying on top of her bed wearing her pajamas. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she'd been crying.

"Why aren't you getting ready? Your date's gonna be here in a few minutes."

"No, he's not. He called and canceled last night."

"Is he sick?"

"He said he forgot that he has to do something with his family and can't take me. But that's a lie. He has a girlfriend now and he's taking her."

Ryoma never realized when he'd been clenching his fists as he heard his sister. He was definitely mad. No one stood up his sister and made her cry.

"He can't do that." Ryoma moved farther into her room and looked down at Sayuri. "I'll make him take you."

"No," she gasped, mortified, and sat up on the edge of her bed, her eyes wide as she gazed up at Ryoma. "That's so embarrassing!"

"Okay, then I'll kick his ass."

Her dark brows rose almost to her hairline. "He's a minor, nii-chan!"

"Good point. Well, I'll kick his dad's ass. Anyone who raises his son to stand a girl up deserves to get his ass kicked just on principle." Ryoma was serious, but for some reason, that got a smile out of Sayuri.

"Thanks, nii-chan."

Ryoma plopped next to Sayuri and ruffled his sister's hair. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Sayuri shrugged. "I didn't think you'd really care."

That caught him off guard. "Hey, I'm human too."

His sister made a face. He messed her hair again. "You're my sister." He said again, as if that explained everything.

Sayuri tired to stifle her laughter as Ryoma stood up. "Why don't you put on your new dress and come with me?"

"Where?"

"To a banquet."

She smiled and sprang to her feet. "Cool!"

He pushed her toward her closet. "Come on. I'll wait."

He walked out of Sayuri's room and grabbed his jacket to wait in the living room. He shrugged into the four-button jacket and hoped Sayuri shook her tailfeathers, but, typical of all females he'd ever known, she took her time getting ready.

When Sayuri appeared in front of him, they were already half an hour late. She turned around in a circle for Ryoma to see her dress.

"How do I look?"

The seam running up the back of the dress pulled to the left across her behind. Above the shoulders, she did look good. Her silver eye shadow was a little strange, though.

"What size are you?" Ryoma asked, and by the look she gave him he immediately realized his mistake.

He knew better than to ask a woman her dress size. But Sayuri wasn't a woman. She was a girl and she was his sister. He didn't want his sister wearing anything like the little dress she was wearing, which looked like it was two sizes smaller.

"It's a zero. Can you believe I fit into a size zero?"

Ryoma kept silent. Zero wasn't even a size.

Kami, help him.

* * *

By the time Ryoma turned the keys of his Land Cruiser over to the valet, the two Echizens were more than an hour late. Stepping off the elevator, they hit a wall of noise, the combination of hundreds of voices, the clatter of dishes being cleared, and the three-piece band tuning their instruments. A sea of black tuxedos and bright dresses mixed and mingled within the dimly lit room. Ryoma had been here before. Not this exact location, not this occasion, but at a hundred or so other banquets he'd attended for as long as he could remember.

As he checked Sayuri's coat, he spotted Vlad, Momo and Sengoku and introduced Sayuri to his teammates. Well it was more like he shoved her to them and said 'my sister, be nice'. They asked her about school, and the more they spoke to her, the more she slid behind Ryoma, until only about a half of her showed. He didn't know if she was intimidated by the tall figures before her, or she was just plain shy. Psh. His sister didn't know how to be shy.

"Have you seen Tiger?" Momo asked.

"Ryuzaki? No, why?"

The Dunker raised his beer and shrugged.

"Where is she anyway?"

Sengoku lifted his finger from his glass and pointed to a woman several feet away with her back to Ryoma. She had short brown corkscrew curls about her head and the curls cascaded down her back to just inches after her shoulders. The side ends brushed lightly against her shoulders. A deep red dress wrapped her small figure, the straps resting on the sides of her shoulders, and the back was dipped to the middle of her back, giving a view of her white skin. The dress fit loose about her hips and behind and fell to her calves. On her feet she wore a pair of shiny red shoes with about three-inch heels. She stood talking to two other women. One he recognized as Momo's wife, and the other woman looked vaguely familiar and he'd wondered if he'd seen her interviewing some retired players. None of the women looked like Ryuzaki Sakuno.

"Who's the woman in black?" he asked, referring to the woman he found familiar just now.

"That's Shiba-san. A sports reporter." Momo explained, taking a swig from his beer. He swallowed and added, "Ah, there's Tiger."

Ryoma raised a brow. Momo and Sengoku were mistaken. Sakuno wore black or gray and had long hair. He reached for the top button closing his jacket as Horio approached the woman and said something next to her ear. She turned in profile and Ryoma's hand froze. The archangel of gloom and doom wasn't wearing black tonight, and she'd trimmed her hair.

"C'mon," he said to Sayuri. They wove their way through the guests.

"Ryuzaki," he said as he approached.

She looked over her shoulder, and a soft strand fell across one eye. She pushed it back and smiled. Her side bangs made her look young and so damn cute. He couldn't help but return back her smile with a twitch of the corner of his lips. Her new haircut made her brown eyes look huge, and she wore makeup that turned them all smoky, sexy. Her lips were painted dark red, his favorite. The heat in the room seemed to rise several degrees and he unbuttoned his jacket.

"Hello, Ryoma-kun." Her voice sounded smoky too.

"Echizen," Horio said.

"Horio." With his hand on Sayuri's back, he forced her to stay by his side. "This is Sayuri, my date," he said, and Sakuno made a small 'o' with her mouth.

"My sister." He said again.

"A-Ah… Okay then." Sakuno stuck out her hand and smiled at Sayuri. "I like your dress. Black is my favorite color."

Ryoma figured that was pretty much an understatement.

As Sayuri talked to Sakuno about school and life in Japan, Horio also took his time bragging about being a member of TAM, and Ryoma took the opportunity to check out Sakuno's dress.

The front scooped over her breasts, showing off a modest amount of skin. The room was warm, hot even, and he didn't know if it was the booze or her that was making him feel all queasy inside.

"Ne, nii-chan," Sayuri tugged at his sleeve, pulling his attention away from Sakuno's dress.

He looked over his shoulder at his sister. "Hn?"

"Do you know where the restrooms are?"

He didn't know. He never stayed long for every party attended, and his face started to turn blank as he looked at Sayuri.

"I know," Sakuno answered for him. "Follow me."

Sayuri gladly took the hand that Sakuno offered and within seconds, the two were quickly swallowed within the crowd. When he turned back, he was left staring at Horio.

Horio spoke first.

"I saw the way you were looking at Ryuzaki. She's not your type."

Ryoma brushed aside his jacket and stuck his hand in his pocket. "What type is that?"

"A rink bunny."

Ryoma never went with rink bunnies, and he wasn't so sure he had a type anymore. Not when he could look at Ryuzaki Sakuno and wonder what she'd do if he pulled her into a closet and wipe off the red lipstick from her lips. But of course, he would never do that. Not with Sakuno.

"So, what's it to you?"

"Ryuzaki and I are friends."

"Aren't you the same guy who called and asked me to talk her into taking her job back?"

"That was business. If you mess with her, she could lose her job. Permanently. I'd be really pissed off if you did something to hurt her."

Ryoma looked down into Horio's pale face and his unibrow, and almost developed some respect for the guy. "Are you threatening me?"

"Yes, Echizen."

The Dragons Captain smirked. Maybe Horio wasn't the dickless wonder he'd always thought.

The band struck its first chords and Ryoma walked away. He wove his way to the man of the hour, Yukimura Seichi. Momoshiro joined them, and they talked about tennis, discussing the Dragons' chances of winning the cup that year. Being the silent type he was, Ryoma went by the conversation with occasional nods and some short answers.

Some time after Yukimura talked about new acquisitions, Tachibana Ann and some other women joined them for a dance. Before he was sucked into dancing with a busty blonde, Ryoma excused himself to check out on his sister.

Sayuri was really enjoying herself in the restroom.

* * *

Sakuno dried her hands with a paper towel and tossed it in the garbage. She looked into the mirror above the sink and hardly recognized herself. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing. She opened the little purse she'd borrowed from Tomoka and pulled out a tube of red lip gloss. Sayuri joined her at the sink, and Sakuno studied Ryoma's sister as she washed her hands.

Brother and sister looked really alike, except that Sayuri's hair was long and wavy, and her face structure was finer, not as strong and chiseled as Ryoma's. Their eyes were equally gorgeous, pools of ambers that shone clearly.

Earlier, when she'd turned and seen Ryoma with such a young girl, she'd been shocked. Her first thought had been that he should be arrested, but then he'd shocked her further a moment later when he'd introduced his _sister._

"I'm not good at this," Sakuno confessed as she leaned forward and smeared gloss on her lips.

Before the banquet, Tomoka had put on some sort of semi-permanent color on her lips, and all Sakuno had to do was reapply the gloss. She thought she'd done a good job, but she had no experience and wasn't certain.

"Do my lips look messy, Sakuya-chan?"

"No."

"Huge?"

"No." Sayuri dropped the paper towel in the trash. "I like your dress, nee-chan."

Sakuno put a hand to her chest, touched by the simple compliment. "Thank you. I like yours too."

Sayuri spun around in a circle to show Sakuno the dress with little roses sewn on it. "I got it at Tokyo Mall. I picked this out, but nii-chan bought it."

If that was the case, Sakuno wondered why Ryoma let his sister buy a dress that was too small. She might not be a slave to fashion, but even she could see it.

"That was very nice of him." Through the mirror, she watched Sayuri coat her lips a bit too much with the lip gloss she'd handed to the sixteen-year old.

"Yep, nii-chan is kind of nice. But he keeps quiet all of the time. He doesn't even like to smile. He only smiles when he's with his cat."

Sakuno laughed as Sayuri gave her the lip gloss back. A cat? Echizen Ryoma has a cat? Somehow a guy spending time with a pet appealed to Sakuno, and she didn't know why. Maybe because it was Ryoma they were talking about.

* * *

Ryoma waited outside the women's for his sister, his arms crossed. When she came out giggling with Sakuno next to her, he raised a brow. They weren't talking about him, were they?

"Ah, nii-chan," Sayuri chided as she caught sight of Ryoma.

"That was long." He said, his voice still the monotonous baritone Sayuri had grown used to since the past weeks she'd stayed with him.

Seeing Ryoma talking to his sister pinched Sakuno's heart. She didn't know why, but it seemed that it was very sweet of him to bring his sister to the banquet, after she learned that Sayuri was stood up. A warm smile decorated her face as she recalled Sayuri telling her that Ryoma had been so serious in kicking the guy's ass for his sister.

Deciding to leave the two alone, Sakuno started to walk to the ballroom.

"Wait, Ryuzaki." A strong hand grasped her by the elbow, stopping her in her tracks.

She turned around and didn't see Sayuri with him. As if sensing her confusion, Ryoma pulled her closer to him and explained about Sayuri's disappearance.

"Sayuri's with Horio on the dance floor. He's talking to her about good universities,"

Sakuno nodded slowly, understanding the fact that they were alone near the restrooms where the lights have dimmed.

"A-And?" She didn't know what to say, and she didn't know why Ryoma was pulling her to a secluded part of the hall way leading to the men's.

The dimmed light caused Ryoma's amber eyes to glow slightly as he cupped her chin in one hand and reached into his pocket with the other.

"And I have something to say to you." He said as he pulled out his navy handkerchief.

He pinned her down with his eyes as he brought her chin up. With the other hand, he began wiping off the lip gloss Sakuno had on. His eyes, previously trained on her eyes, were focused on her mouth as he deliberately took his time to rub Sakuno's lips.

"You can't wear this," he said, his voice deep and relaxing, it almost caused Sakuno's knees to buckle. "I can't focus."

Focus? Sakuno was too stunned to even utter a word as he slowly rubbed the red color off her lips.

"F-Focus? For what?" The words came out as a whisper.

Why was she whispering? She couldn't breathe, that was why. Ryoma stopped wiping her lips and tucked the piece of cloth back into his pocket. The hand previously holding the hanky was placed onto the curve of her waist, pulling her so close that their noses nearly touched. Her chin was brought up so that her brown eyes locked with his amber ones.

"I was thinking..." he said, his breath brushing her lips. His amber orbs lowered to her mouth, and the corner of his mouth lifted up a notch.

"... if you'd be mad." He continued, his eyes trained on her lips, now tingling with his warm breath.

Mad? Why would she be mad?

"Tell me, Ryuzaki," his eyes returned to stare into hers.

Sakuno could feel her cheeks burning as he spoke, his lips brushing against hers in a very gentle stroke. It was achingly gentle, she'd thought she would do just about anything for him to just kiss her if he meant it.

"T-T-Tell... you... wh-what?" There she go again, too preoccupied with the whisper of his cologne to even notice that she was stuttering.

His lips curved upwards as his hand slid around her waist and rested against the small of her back, feeling the smoothness of her supple skin. He was surprised that being close to Sakuno made his heart beat against his ribcage like crazy, and he didn't know why he was so worked up about her red, red lips.

"Will you be mad if I do this..." He didn't bother to make the statement sound like a question, as he pressed his lips against hers.

Sakuno was so stunned, she couldn't do anything more than just to stand there and let his hand cup her cheek as he placed tender kisses on her lips. He pushed her till her back hit a wall, and she no longer cared what he meant by her being mad. She ran her palms up the front of his white shirt to the sides of his neck. This couldn't be happening. Not to her. Not with him.

As the band began to struck another number, Ryoma realized that he was kissing Sakuno, the team's Tiger, good luck charm, and he didn't know which surprised him more; the fact that he actually liked the way Sakuno kissed or the fact that she'd even kissed him back at all. A moan escaped her throat as Ryoma's hand on her cheek traveled to the side of her head, running his fingers through her smooth hair that was left down.

As his phone rang, he told himself to stop. But he couldn't stop. He _didn't _want to stop.

The phone rang again, forcing him to pull away from Sakuno. He watched her lick her bottom lip, and he cursed under his breath as he turned around to answer the phone.

* * *

Sakuno stood still for a few seconds as she watched Ryoma turning around to answer the ringing phone in his pocket. Then it all came to her in a quick flash.

She gasped.

She'd kissed Ryoma.

THE Echizen Ryoma.

She could feel her face burning as realization hit her. But she didn't move. She didn't _dare _to move. She was afraid that all of this was a dream. That Tomoka had been so happy picking out the red dress for her was a dream. That having so much fun going out for a make over was a dream. That feeling helplessly in love with Ryoma as he rubbed the lip gloss off her lips was a dream.

She was afraid. For the first time since years, Ryuzaki Sakuno felt afraid of falling in love.

Because she knew she had gone against her own principles.

That Ken dated Barbie. And athletes dated supermodels.

"Ryuzaki?" His voice brought her back to reality.

"Y-Yes?" She asked, her eyes glassy.

"Horio called," he said, shoving his hands into his black pants.

Seeing Sakuno's glassy eyes and disoriented face, he decided to continue. "He needs to get back to the headquarters for an emergency meeting."

"Oh. Okay." As if splashed by cold water, Sakuno blinked her eyes, and made a move towards the ballroom.

"Wait." Ryoma's hand shot out to grasp her elbow, effectively stopping her.

Sakuno didn't look at him, afraid that he would see the disappointment in her eyes. She was disappointed because he was acting as if he'd never kissed her. That he'd never took his time rubbing her lips with his hanky. That he'd never spoke to her so closely that their lips had brushed lightly against each other.

"I-I need to go too. I came w-with Horio-san…" She didn't know why she was yet again stuttering, when all the while Ryoma could act so cool and speak normally.

"That's why I'll send you home. I told Horio already."

"Oh." Was all that she could say as he said something about waiting for him along with Sayuri while he retrieved their coats for them.

"Nee-chan," Sayuri looked at Sakuno as Ryoma left them somewhere to wait for him.

"Yes?" Sakuno managed to put on a smile as she turned to the younger Echizen.

"Are you okay? You look… weird." The sixteen-year old gently put a hand on Sakuno's forehead to check the temperature.

"Thanks, Sayuri-chan. But I'm okay. Just… a little bit tired, you know."

Sayuri mouthed an 'okay' and shrugged it off as she saw Ryoma returning with their coats.

* * *

**A/N: Phew! That was HARD thinking of a good way to finish this chap. The red dress was actually a dress that I've seen my friend wearing at a function that we'd attended before, and it was a really gorgeous dress. Also, I like to think that Sakuno looks good in red and dark blue. I just don't know why. See ya in the next chapter, peeps!**

_**Terminology: **_

_**Aka no Ou – Literally means 'Red King'. A character from Samurai Deeper Kyo, his hair is messy and stands up at different angles.**_


	10. Ch9: Questions Left Unanswered

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: I'm having the most terrible toothache in history and thus I'm not so sure if this chap is that nice. I just hope you like it, as much as I do. I'll just have my fingers crossed and hope that people don't bash me. Man, my tooth hurts.**

**the girl in the green scarf ****: Aw, don't cry. Of course I'll update my stories, I'll never give up on you guys! And thank you so much for the compliment, I'm still trying to perfect my writing and glad that you like my stories.**

* * *

**Ch9: Questions Left Unanswered.**

Sakuno closed her laptop on Sweet Sakura and her latest victim, and rose from the chair. She pushed aside the heavy drapes, and looked out the hotel window at downtown Denver, Colorado. She'd definitely developed an infatuation for Ryoma. That was what she thought as the warm sensation on her lips came back to life. The drapes fell from her hands and she turned back to the room.

It had been about sixteen hours since Ryoma had kissed the breath out of her. Sixteen hours of reliving and analyzing every word and action. Sixteen hours later, she still didn't know what to think. He'd kissed her and changed everything. If they weren't in the middle of a hallway, Tomoka would've whispered in her head to just rip off his shirt and check out his lucky horseshoe tattoo.

Sakuno shook her head and slapped the sides of her face with both hands.

Bad Sakuno!

Bad, bad Sakuno!

She sighed and settled onto the king-sized bed situated in the middle of the hotel room. The itinerary for that week was a little different. After the Dragons' match with the Denver Beetles, there would be no game nights for the rest of the week due to some technical problems involving the owners of the tennis teams worldwide. Including Mr. Kevin Schneider, who owned the Dragons. No doubt, the meeting would be conducted in a cocktail of swears and insults in thirteen different languages. Not the best times for the management guys, but gives the players a hell of a break.

Which also concluded that Sakuno would be free for the whole week too. And she had planned everything to do within the week which included making back-up chapters of Sweet Sakura and Single Soul. And also visiting her mother's and her granny's grave. Her dad would be staying at home with his two other friends in Kyoto, living the life he always wanted.

Her alarm clock beeped, instantly waking her up from her short nap. She blinked away the tiredness from her eyes, and while she washed her face and put on a casual black sweater, she wondered when she'd slept. The phone rang and caused Sakuno to tumble backwards when she was struggling with her black pants.

"Hello?" She asked, rubbing the sore spot on the back of her head.

"Ryuzaki? Where are you?" Horio sounded frantic.

Sakuno looked at her watch. Still forty-five minutes to go before the game started. What's with the rush?

"In my room, I'm heading for the door now. What's wrong?" She slipped the plastic card and the door was automatically locked.

"Good, good." He sighed relieved and hung up just like that.

"What?" Sakuno looked at the piece of technology in her hand.

Shrugging the matter off, she managed to squeeze into the elevator and pushed the button to the lobby.

* * *

As they walked through the revolving doors of the complex, cheers were heard from the players. Yet another victory, plus a whole week for themselves as soon as the private jet touched down on Tokyo. Momo caught Sakuno in a headlock and messed her braided hair.

"C'mon, Tiger! Let's celebrate with us!"

Sakuno laughed painfully and smoothed down her messy hair as she managed to free herself from Momo's torture.

"Um, I think I'll pass, Momoshiro-san."

Disappointment flashed through Eiji's and Bobby Chin's faces. "Nya, do you have plans?"

"I have a dinner date with my best friend." That was definitely a lie. Tomoka already had a date of her own.

She did have plans for the _next_ day, but she didn't want to stay a moment longer. It wasn't because she hated the players, it was quite the opposite, actually. She loved them to bits, but she couldn't force herself to spend another second with them when Ryoma was there. She couldn't bring herself to look into his face as she called him 'big dumb kabocha' before the previous game. She knew he was watching her, demanding an answer for her weird change of moods.

Sakuno was afraid he would notice that she was into him. She was afraid that he would see right through her and tell that she was in love with him, and he'd definitely run the other way.

She sighed as she entered the elevator. She was being ridiculous again.

She needed to face him sooner or later for the interview anyway.

Before the doors entirely closed, they opened again, revealing a bored-looking Ryoma with his tennis bag on one shoulder and a suitcase on wheels in the other hand. They pushed the same button to the same floor of the garage and the doors slid closed. Ryoma leaned back against the wall and glanced over at Sakuno. Her head was tilted to one side as she studied him. She looked worn out, but so damn cute. He cleared his throat. This short reporter was bothering him in ways that he didn't want to be bothered.

"What?" he asked.

"Are you going to give me the interview this week? Since we're both free…"

She might be tired, but she was obviously on the job. While he was thinking how cute she was, she was thinking about her work. Damnation.

"I'll think about that." He said, earning a pout from the braided woman.

"Hey, we made a deal!"

The doors slid open, and with his long strides, Ryoma had Sakuno clumsily catching up to him, dragging a huge suitcase on wheels behind her.

"R-Ryoma-kun!"

Ryoma stopped at his Land Cruiser and unlocked the passenger seat. He easily tossed his bags into his car and walked past the blubbering Sakuno towards the driver's seat. He rested his hand on the door handle and turned to her.

"Of course we made a deal."

Sakuno crossed her arms beneath her chest. "Exactly. And you're not backing down, are you?"

Ryoma almost chuckled as he looked at her, her cheeks red with either embarrassment or anger or irritation. Knowing the archangel of gloom, probably all of them.

"I'm not."

Sakuno sighed relieved and nodded to herself, as if confirming something that was playing through her head.

"Okay, bye." She said, and turned around to walk past the two cars separating his Land cruiser from her own car.

Ryoma raised his brows as he stood next to his vehicle, watching her huffing as she made futile attempts to heave the huge suitcase into the trunk of her car. The books she'd bought in Colorado were making her suitcase as heavy as a block of mortar. She eventually gave up, heaved a sigh and looked at him. She blinked. Then he blinked back.

"What, Ryoma-kun?"

Opting to suppress the amused smirk on his face, he walked over to her and with a hand on the handle, he asked, "Want help?"

Sakuno blushed as she realized he'd been observing her, stupidly trying to dump her ridiculously huge suitcase into the car. She stepped aside and smiled shyly.

"U-Um, that would be nice, thank you."

"Girls," he scoffed as he effortlessly heaved the suitcase into the trunk.

Sakuno frowned as she heard his remark. "What was that supposed to mean, Ryoma-kun?"

Said name ignored the question as he walked back to his car. Again, Sakuno pouted as the tennis player entered the driver's side and ignited the engine.

"You are really so full of yourself, aren't you?" she muttered to herself as she too climbed into the driver's seat and without taking a glance behind her car, she geared into reverse.

Then the next thing that happened startled her. It happened too fast, that it took Sakuno quite a time to register the smell of smoke emanating from behind. She had reversed into someone's car. With every ounce of her soul leaving her body with each step she made to get out of her seat, Sakuno prayed silently that the damage inflicted wasn't really serious.

A clearly annoyed Ryoma was glaring at her, his arms crossed over his chest as he motioned towards the damage she'd done to the bumper of his Land Cruiser.

"Now what have you done?"

Sakuno gulped. She laughed nervously and gave him a shaky smile.

"S-Sorry, Ryoma-kun…"

That was all she could do to hope that Ryoma would not sue her for this.

But then, seeing his hard amber eyes, maybe it was asking too much of him.

* * *

He tightened his grip on the racket he was holding. The machine spit out another tennis ball towards him. Again, with precision and a controlled amount of strength, Ryoma hit the ball flying at him like a bright, green bullet.

_A hundred and fifty_

He counted the amount of balls he'd returned, so far not missing a ball. Sayuri was staying at her new friend's house and he was training by himself at the local sports complex, a place where he often went to for the peace and quiet he seldom had ever since he joined the team. Since the first months he'd joined the team, instantly appointed as the captain, he'd found little time for himself. It took him five months to adjust to the pace of the events happening around him. And he'd finally discovered some peace for himself. However, recently his peace was often shattered by someone. Namely a woman with average breasts and a single braid running down her back.

Damn.

Another ball came flying towards him, and he returned the ball with so much force that it made a gash through the green net just behind the tennis ball sniper.

"Ohoho! Ready to take on our next opponents already, Echizen?"

The Dragons Captain rested the racket on one shoulder and without turning around, he began picking up the scattered balls.

"I thought you were at Okinawa with your family, Momo."

"We're going tomorrow. Why're you here?"

Ryoma turned to his teammate, a scowl evident on his face. "Training, of course."

Momo whistled as he noticed the hole Ryoma made. "Training for what, a wrestling match? Who pissed you off this time?"

The younger captain stopped in his tracks as he felt that familiar tingling feeling in his right knee again. His brows drew a frown as he took a seat on a bench. Momo was the only one who knew about the occasional pains in his knees, and he intended to keep it that way. He took a swig of his water and thought about Momo's question.

He was definitely annoyed, and severely ticked off. Why? Because Sakuno had been avoiding him for the past twenty-four hours and he didn't know why. Was the kiss too horrible that she didn't even want to look him in the eyes when she called him a big dumb kabocha? She didn't even say 'thank you' when he helped her with her suitcase, and she even repaid his kindness – which he seldom showed to anyone – by ramming into his car. His car, damnit! If it weren't for the way her lips tasted and how soft they felt against his, he would've sued her out of annoyance.

"Ryuzaki." He answered. Despite his anger, he was even surprised he managed to sound composed.

Momo raised his dark brows. "Tiger? What did she do?"

Ryoma walked to the nearest vending machine to buy a Ponta and plopped next to his best buddy.

"She ran into my car."

He chugged down the grape-flavored soda as Momo rolled on the floor laughing out like a maniac. Sending deathly glares to the Dunker was all he could do to stop himself from ripping off the spike-haired guy's head.

"Seriously?" Momo ignored the death glares and asked again for confirmation.

When Ryoma nodded with a grim line on his lips, Momo burst out laughing again.

"Oh, man. She sure knows how to get back at you."

Irritated at Momo's outburst, Ryoma turned to the older guy. "What do you mean by that?"

Momo cleared his throat and when he was finally composed, he winked at his younger tennis captain.

"Everyone knows that you and her have some sort of mutual feelings."

What the hell? How did this come about?

"Whoever told you that, Momo."

Said name shrugged. "Eiji told me. Anyway, it's clear that she hates it when you bully her."

Now this was getting out of hand. Him? Bullying Sakuno?

"I didn't bully her."

"Well, you got her fired once."

Ryoma tossed the empty can into a bin. When it safely landed in the green bin, he turned to Momo, his face bored. He didn't know what to say to that. Momo was true. But he got her job back. That was a win-win situation anyway. In what way did he ever bully her?

As he thought about Sakuno and her round eyes when she apologized to him for damaging both cars, Momo grinned.

"Hey, I think you like her."

Ryoma almost laughed. Almost. Instead, a wicked smirk played about his lips.

"Well, now Momo, what shit have you heard this time?"

Momo shrugged his shoulders. "One doesn't have to hear, seeing is believing."

"Since when did you use philosophy?"

"Since I wanted to. Anyways, the others might not see it. But I, my friend, can read through you like a book. C'mon, maybe you're denying it. Denying it you are, my friend."

"I've nothing to deny anyway."

Giving up, Momo patted his best friend's back.

"'S Okay, I understand."

And with that last pat, Momo walked away from the local complex. As Ryoma watched the Dunker's disappearing figure, a corner of his mouth lifted a notch. Like Ryuzaki? That was highly possible, given that she sometimes made him thinking about stuff that should be better left alone. She made his heart beat strangely whenever she flashed her smiles, even as the smiles weren't directed at him, even when he didn't want his heart to respond to her.

"Eh? Ryoma-kun?"

Speaking of the devil.

He turned around to look at her, with all the intention to let her know how annoyed he was with her. But then seeing her in a casual black sweater and grey sweatpants, looking like the most innocent creature on earth, his annoyance simply evaporated. Just like that.

"What, Ryuzaki? Got lost again?"

Sakuno crossed her arms beneath her chest and an annoyed look was plastered onto her face, her cheeks burning.

"Actually, Ryoma-kun, I'm here to pick up my friend's little brothers from their baseball training. What about you?"

Ryoma raised a brow. "Pick up? How are you gonna do that? You just damaged your car."

His last statement startled Sakuno, and her blush deepened. "Public transport, Ryoma-kun."

He made no indication that he heard her, so she decided to walk closer to the bench he was sitting on.

"A-Ano… About your car… I'm really sorry, you know."

Suddenly all the annoyance in her voice was changed into the softest voice she had ever used on him. This surprised her, it also surprised Ryoma. He turned his head towards her, and a smirk appeared on his face.

"Why, thank you. For apologizing."

She didn't notice the mocking tone he'd used, and she flashed him a smile. "Of course, my parents brought me up well."

Sakuno being oblivious to certain situations; was one thing he couldn't understand about her. How can one be as oblivious as Sakuno? She might even take an insult as a compliment, judging by her lack of awareness of other people's change in tones.

Silence stretched between the two as Sakuno stood still next to the bench, trying to start a decent conversation. When she couldn't, she decided that she should check up on the Osakada triplets.

When she left, Ryoma stood up and walked towards the machine. He slotted some coins and prepared to hit another round of tennis balls.

* * *

Sakuno frowned as she watched the teenage boys run around the indoor stadium, catching randomly thrown soft balls. She glanced at her watch. It was almost after eleven and the boys were still training. She didn't like the fact that the boys were still training even though it was past their curfew. They were humans, and they needed to sleep as much as anyone else if they were to win the upcoming nationals.

And speaking of late-night practices, she was concerned about Ryoma. While other players were enjoying themselves over the one-week break, he was busying himself with tennis practice. While she thought about Ryoma, one of the Osakada triplets walked towards her, a towel on his shoulder.

"Nee-chan, we'll finish in thirty minutes."

Sakuno patted the boy's back, and regretted doing so. He was drenched in sweat.

"That's okay, I'll wait."

The boy nodded and gave Sakuno a wave of his hand as he joined his team mates.

Seeing no need for her to stay there, she walked towards the tennis area to ask Ryoma something. Why was he there, when he could stay at home and have beer or something with his dad?

The sound of tennis balls being hit caught her attention. Silently, she observed the man whom stole her breath away with just a kiss. His mouth was muttering something as he hit the balls. Counting, maybe. It was a wonder to her that he could return all the balls with the same precision and the same amount of strength.

Then she noticed it.

The way he poised was a little off.

Her eyes lowered from his hands to his knees. Maybe his knees weren't one hundred percent as he claimed it to be.

The last ball shot towards him and he straightened his back, letting the ball whizz past his head. Without turning around, he rested his racket on one shoulder.

"What is it?"

His deep voice startled her. Did he know she was standing there, looking at him?

"U-Um… No, nothing. Just continue, don't mind me."

Ryoma turned around and his amber gaze met her brown eyes. He simply looked at her, and his eyes were gleaming with a sense of curiosity. Was he about to ask her something? Because she didn't know if she could answer him without blushing, it would be hard for her to concentrate when she had his sweaty body too look at.

Bad, bad Sakuno!

He chose to say nothing as he plopped onto the bench where his tennis bag rested. The slight frown on his forehead caught Sakuno's attention again. She wondered if he noticed that she was suspecting his knees. She swallowed and braved herself to walk to him. He looked up from his shoes as she stopped right in front of him. She kept her hands clasped together behind her and bent forward a little.

"A-Ano… I know this isn't any of my business but…"

"Then don't bother asking."

"… are your knees bothering you?" She finished, something similar to concern glowing in her eyes.

That caught Ryoma off-guard. He never would have guessed that out of all people, Sakuno was the one who would find out about his problem with his knees. She was clueless about tennis, and he wouldn't have thought someone as oblivious as Sakuno could sense that his pose was a little off. Even his dad hadn't seen him in this state. Nanjiroh was too obsessed with his nude magazines to even notice the furrow of his brows whenever he played a match for more than two hours. But then, their team was so good that they often finished their matches within fifty-five minutes flat. No one would've seen him frowning when he used his Split Steps. But the clueless Sakuno? The girl who couldn't even tell the difference between a serve and a smash the first time she set foot in the locker room?

Sakuno could see he was slightly surprised. Even though he wasn't the type to freak out like Tomoka whenever a secret was accidentally leaked out, she was quite surprised to see that Ryoma was still composed. If it wasn't for the slight raise of his brows, she never would've guessed that she was right. As if knowing that there was no point in hiding the truth, Ryoma opted to lean back into the hard bench and with all the arrogance in the world, he lifted a brow and gave her a smirk.

"Give the Tiger a treat, you're damn right."

Sakuno nodded slowly. So, she was right.

Ryoma expected that she would pout or frown at him for lying at her about his knees in the first place. But she further surprised him by turning her back on him, and walked to the vending machine to buy a coke.

"Here," she gave him the cold can to him as she took the seat next to him.

"I don't drink coke, it has caffeine. And a lot of sugar." He didn't take the drink that she offered.

"Place this at your knee. It can soothe the pain. Also, Ryoma-kun, Ponta has a lot of sugar too." She leaned towards him and placed the chilled can on his right knee, as if she knew which knee was hurting.

She took his hand and let it hold onto the can. A smile graced her lips, and somehow seeing her again smiling up at him, made him want to kiss her for the second time. Instead, he decided to give her his naughty smirk.

"Thanks Ace."

Sakuno blushed and looked away. "W-well you don't look thankful."

Ryoma decided to let that one off. Oh, he could make sure she knew that he was thankful, in his own way. But maybe some other time. He tipped the brim of his black cap, a device that helped him from getting recognized by the nagging press.

"Um… Ryoma-kun?"

"Hm?"

She played with the hem of her sweater, thinking of the appropriate way to ask him about his knees without sounding too pushy. As if sensing her dilemma, Ryoma patted her head.

"You're gonna ask me about my knees, aren't you?"

Sakuno nodded. "Since when have your knees been acting up?"

"After my first match when I finished rehab."

She made an 'oh' with her mouth, and Ryoma wondered if she was purposely wearing lip gloss to impress him.

"Does it always hurt?"

He adjusted the chilled coke and shrugged. "Sometimes."

"Doesn't your dad know?"

"Nope. Just you and Momo."

Sakuno found it hard to believe that. She wondered if he had some sort of problem with his dad. Aside from the fact that he divorced Ryoma's mother when he was a boy, Coach Nanoji seemed like a nice man. Well, a little on the perverted side, but he was a nice old man.

"My dad doesn't know, and I'll leave it at that."

"I see… It's a father and son thing, ne?"

"Quite."

Silence again.

Sakuno's phone rang. She stood up as she flipped open her cell to answer the call, and Ryoma looked at her.

She was a reporter, digging up his secrets so that she would finally have enough money to buy a proper home of her own. Here she was, asking him about his knees, and the answers flowed out of his mouth as if it was a faucet. He was risking his career. He had already risked his career when he kissed her. He thought about how his life had so much to be thought of. How much questions were left unanswered; regarding his reasons for staying in the team even though his knew his knees would someday act up again, the reason why he intended to let Sayuri stay with him, the nagging feeling in his chest when he thought about his sudden interest with the brown-haired, one-of-a-kind reporter before him.

"Ryoma-kun?"

He snapped out of his thoughts, and turned to her. His eyes were unfocused and Sakuno wondered why. She politely bowed to him – a gesture he never witnessed before she ran into his car – and started to walk away, mentioning something about fetching the Osakada boys.

Not more than five steps, she turned around and had a confused look on her face.

"Why did you tell me about this? I'm a reporter, right, Ryoma-kun?"

Said man stood up without saying anything. He walked to Sakuno, the coke still in one hand.

He told her because he trusted her.

Weird, but true.

"I don't know." He said and stopped really close in front of her.

Sakuno blinked repeatedly as she noticed how close he was, that she could feel his breath on top of her head. She stood there, tongue-tied. She didn't even flinch when Ryoma touched the coke onto the crook of her neck.

"What do you think, Ace?"

The cell phone in Sakuno's hand rang again, and she decided that she should back away from him before she lunged herself to him. Without hesitation, Sakuno turned around and left him there. All the while she cursed herself for feeling more drawn to the tennis player.

"How would I know, stupid kabocha." She muttered to herself, her cheeks suddenly blushing.

"Stupid kabocha. And stupid Sakuno."

* * *

**A/N: Yay, another chap finished. I needed to finish this before I get my tooth checked tomorrow. Wish me luck guys! **


	11. Ch10: Falling Deeper

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: Uh… hi? Fufufu… I'm really REALLY sorry for not updating for like, such a long period. I just had so much to do, now that I'm working from 9 – 5 pm. While the nagging guilt eating up inside of me drove me to update this story is one of the many reasons to update, there's also the fact that I've been complaining that some authors don't even bother to update their stories and made me realize that I'm one to talk. So here I am, and while the word GUILT is still plastered onto my forehead like a permanent tattoo, I should present you with something worth reading. (I think.)**

**Ah, before I forget, I also decided to update two chapters because I remembered those who have painstakingly left their reviews and those who put me in their list of favorite stories and authors. Also for those who had put my story on alert. Love you guys! Muwah! Hugs and kisses! Special thanks to:**

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**And the rest of my anonymous readers. Love ya!**

* * *

**Ch10: Falling Deeper  
**

Pink Sakura petals fluttered around the old floor of the temple as the early breeze of spring visited and swirled around to form a small harmless cyclone, bringing along the faint scent of flowers. Lavenders. The light tap of a pair of small black Doc Martens barely did any disturbance to the silence around that time of year and time frame, the distant sound of the bell somewhere behind the temple was the only indicator that the temple was not empty. A small hand was brought up to touch the Sakura flower-shaped hairpin keeping the brown locks out of her forehead. Her pink lips, coated with a thin film of cherry lip gloss curved up into a warm smile as she spoke, her voice hushed.

"Konbanwa, okaa-chan, obaa-chan."

A few silent minutes passed as she walked towards the back of the temple, to a flight of stairs leading up to the cemetery. She stopped in her tracks as the corner of her eye caught something moving by the giant bell. A monk in a black hakama was lying on his side, reading something that resembled a newspaper. She cocked her head as she realized that he was using his leg to swing the log to make the bell sound swing. She turned her shoulders and decided to give the monk a greeting while visiting the large bell which had been her favorite hiding place when she was a child; when she'd played hide and seek with Tomoka while her daddy was doing errands around the temple.

"Konbanwa…" she greeted, making the monk to look up from what he was reading while a leg stopped in its previous ministrations in an awkward position.

Sakuno stopped in her tracks as the monk replied with a laid back 'Uissu' and a familiar grin.

"C-Coach Nan-Nanoji?" She blinked, her words laced with surprise and probably amusement a minute after the unexpected encounter.

"Drop the coach, Ryuzaki Sakuno-chan. As you can see, I'm just a monk right now." He put aside the newspaper and sat upright.

Sakuno giggled as she plopped next to the space beside the monk. The silence came back again, this time without the sound of the bell and the tapping of her boots.

"What is a world-renowned coach- slash -living legend doing here alone; while humbly offering his service as a monk, Echizen Nanjiroh-san?"

Said name laughed sheepishly at her choice of words. "I'm nothing like a legend, Sakuno-chan yo. What about you, walking around such a silent place looking like a living doll?"

This time it was her turn to laugh sheepishly. "N-Nanoji-san… S-Surely you've seen the wrong person… ne?"

Nanjiroh grinned as a reply. He couldn't help it. There were two reasons he'd addressed her as so. Firstly, he had been the one to place those calls before to annoy her and he was also the one who left the dried mouse, giving him a whole two months of guilt on his shoulders. A little flattery would get some guilt off his shoulders. Secondly, he was true to his words. Sakuno wasn't alluringly beautiful, that he knew. But she had something about her that made people look twice into her direction whenever she walked into a room. The girl also had been the only girl who got the gall to stand up to his idiotic of a son and call the amber-eyed thirty year old man a kabocha with all the courage one could possibly muster. He grinned again and laughed out loud as he remembered those moments.

"Nanoji-san? Why are you laughing?"

The old man took ten whole seconds to regain his composure, and with a finger wiping off the tears from the corner of an eye from over-dose laughing, he shook his head.

"Nah, just remembering the time you called my son kabocha."

Her cheeks reddened at the memory. "W-Well… he was being… rude…"

Nanjiroh patted her head. "No harm done! He was kinda shocked though, because you called him a pumpkin. Did he let you keep that name for him?"

At this, he poked Sakuno's shoulder with a finger, earning a raised brow from the woman. "E-Eh? What do you mean?"

"You still call him that before every game, right?"

Her cheeks blushed deeper, and she avoided the legendary samurai's mischievous eyes. How did he know that? She thought that no one took notice of her calling the Samurai Junior a big dumb kabocha before every game, because the other players were so fired up after her pants-dropping speech. Well, it seemed that her conversation with the younger Echizen didn't go unnoticed after all.

Nanjiroh, being the know-it-all mister he was, wiggled his eyebrows. "I have feline eyes, and although I'm old –I'm not telling you my age-, I can see that my son had actually talked to you. To a reporter. A _woman_ reporter."

Sakuno cocked her head as she looked at the monk, a dark brow raised and her blush toning down to a faint hue of pink.

"You're fifty four years old."

Nanjirohs jaw dropped. "Hey, how did you know? Was it Inui again?"

"Yes. A-And… what does being a woman reporter got anything to do with this? It's not… rare… right?"

Ignoring the new revelation of his age, Nanjiroh returned to the mischievous monk he was. "Don't you know?"

"Know… Know what?"

Nanjiroh held up three fingers.

"Firstly, he never, I mean NEVER talked to a reporter ever since he finished his rehab. Reporters always walked away from him with nothing more than a grunt from him or if they're even lucky, walk away with his 'Mada mada dane'. That brat is the team's captain, for god's sake. He should use the media attention to promote himself, and the team of course, and get himself a bunch of BUSTY hotties!"

Sakuno laughed as the monk made imaginary breasts when he emphasized the word 'busty'. The man was funny, she decided. And she felt bad for suspecting the monk that time when she found the dead mouse.

Ah… the wonders of secrecy.

"Secondly," Nanjiroh said, his voice full of enthusiasm. "…he has this thing about not taking as much as a glance towards any women carrying a tag name that read 'reporter'. But look at you, you even managed to make him to at least look at you for more than three seconds!"

She nodded slowly. That was true. Maybe Ryoma even bothered to look at her because he thought she had lesbian spectacles.

Her eyes blinked as she noticed the suddenly silent Nanjiroh as he looked at a spot just above the end of the flight of stairs leading to the cemetery. An uncharacteristic tiny smile replaced the wide grin he had on earlier as he turned to her, his eyes seemed distant.

"And lastly… You're the second person to call him a pumpkin…"

* * *

Sakuno adjusted the flowers in the small glass bottle for both her mother and grandmother, and soundlessly knelt in front of the two marble stones, with the brown folded blanket beneath her protecting her knees from the chill of the early spring. As her hands clasped in a praying manner, she closed her eyes. A small smile decorated her lips as she spoke in hushed tones.

"Hello okaa-san, obaa-san. I'm fine, as usual, and Tomo-chan said hi. I'll bring her here again someday. Otou-san told me to get married and have cute children… for the fiftieth time this year…" she laughed slightly at the last statement.

"I got a nice job, and I'm thinking about quitting 'Sweet Sakura'… I've made friends, and they treat me so nicely as if they were my brothers…"

A blush colored her cheeks as she opened her eyelids. "And I've met a man…He's… interesting. He likes Ponta so much that it worries me… he wears a cap, and he looks good with it. He looks good even without his cap. He's actually kind, but he never shows it…"

She could hear faint sobs from a distance. There was someone else there, crying. She closed her eyes again, her hands still clasped and the faint blush was still there.

"And I think I'm in love with him."

Her previous conversation with Nanjiroh stirred in her head, the muffled sound of the sobs breaking the silence of the cemetery.

- FLASHBACK -

"_The only one to call him pumpkin was his mother. That Ryoma never showed it, but he misses her every day. Ever since the first time he walked away from Rinko's tomb… he had talked even less to me. And when he did, it always concerns tennis."_

_Sakuno wondered if she should tell the monk about Ryoma's knees. Why would Ryoma distance himself from his dad, when it was clearly the old man loved his son._

"_Why would he talk less?" she asked, her voice a hushed tone. _

"_I thought he was angry at me because I divorced his mother and married Sayuri's mama. But I was wrong. That brat wasn't mad at me, he was mad at himself. He blamed himself because he had been to a tournament when Rinko died of a sudden aneurism."_

_Silence enveloped the two, and Sakuno felt that similar pain in her chest when she found out her mother had died of cancer. It felt so painful, that it made her hard to cry._

"_No one could've known about the aneurism… Ryoma-kun shouldn't blame himself."_

_Nanjiroh sighed as he folded his legs, sitting Indian-style._

"_I told him the same thing. But Ryoma wouldn't take any of it. He said if he had been there with her, he could have at least sent her to the hospital earlier when Rinko collapsed in the middle of a market. That idiot of a son didn't even look me in the eyes when he said he knew I was mad at him."_

_Sakuno scooted closer. "Were you?"_

"_I wasn't. I was never mad at him. Sure I loved Rinko, she was my first wife, and I still loved her when I remarried with someone else… but things happen for a reason… and I realized that the reason I remarried was because the woman had the same qualities as Rinko. I loved Sayuri's mama for who she was though, and that's why I love my daughter too… despite the fact she hates me to bits."_

_Nanjiroh laughed, and it came out bitter. "God, the two women I loved ended up dying before me."_

_Sakuno squeezed his shoulder slightly with her small hand and flashed him a smile._

"_I'm sure your children will open up to you. I know."_

_It was a few minutes when they stayed silent. Sakuno's small hand was a contrast to the wide expanse of Nanjiroh's shoulder as she kept it there, as an act of reassurance. Another minute passed when suddenly Nanjiroh laughed out loud while scratching the back of his head._

"_Why am I being such a pathetic old man today! This is so not me!"_

_He was right. He wasn't acting like the usual perverted and energetic Coach Nanoji everyone knew. Because those eyes of his did not have even a glint of happiness in them, despite his loud laughter._

- FLASHBACK -

A tear trickled down her cheek, she wiped it away. She hadn't cried in a long time, and she'd thought her tears were dried up when she cried herself to sleep 22 years ago. Somehow after hearing Nanjiroh's story, she fell deeper into her feelings for Ryoma.

"His name is Ryoma-kun. Echizen Ryoma-kun. His surname is weird, right? He's arrogant but I can sense something else from him whenever I look into his eyes…He likes to call my glasses 'lesbo', and he called me an archangel of gloom and doom… and he hates my shoes… But he's kind… Obaa-chan…I know you'll be mad at me for falling for a guy as… rude and as sharp-tongued as him… But I can't help it…"

The sobs were getting louder, or had it been that distinct when she was there? She turned to her right, and saw a young girl praying in front of a tomb, her eyes closed but she was crying. Poor girl. Sakuno had long stopped crying when she was that girl's age. Having long silky brown hair made her an easy target for jealous girls, and she had grown resistant to the insults and sometime beatings to not even shed a tear.

Ending her prayers, Sakuno quietly stood up from her position and walked towards the crying girl. Her hair was black, and something struck Sakuno as she neared the sobbing girl.

"S-Sayuri… chan?"

The girl popped open her eyes, and stared back at Sakuno with brilliant amber eyes, traces of tears still there.

"O-Onee…chan?"

The Ryuzaki smiled warmly at the girl, and sat next to her, before she wrapped an arm around the petite sixteen-year old's shoulder to give a little reassuring squeeze.

"Your mother?"

To Sakuno's surprise, the youngest Echizen shook her head and wiped off the tears. Her voice was hoarse as she replied.

"No. It's Rinko baa-chan's tomb."

"Oh. Why are you crying then?"

Sayuri shook her head again, and her head dropped. "I feel guilty."

Sakuno kept silent, not interrupting the young girl's thoughts. And the silence prompted Sayuri to tell everything to the reporter, not even once thinking about her reputation as Echizen Ryoma's sister.

She told Sakuno about her rude attitude towards Ryoma's mother even though she never met her daddy's first wife. She'd blamed Rinko for stealing Nanjiroh's love for his second wife, she'd blamed the dead woman's tomb to be the only thing getting in her way for achieving a complete family. But then when she'd seen the old albums Ryoma had kept tucked safely in the deepest part of the bookshelves, she saw the real Rinko holding a smiling child, her nii-chan; and she saw the happiness in the boy's amber eyes that it made her feel like such an ass. Then she'd noticed the small picture of Rinko smiling brightly inside a small thin frame tucked safely under the pillow next to his own, and realized that he had missed his mother as much as she missed hers.

"I-I'm just beginning to like him as a brother, and because he was so secretive, I never knew he misses Rinko baa-chan every single day. I'm… I'm a really bad person, nee-chan."

Sakuno squeezed tighter and let Sayuri-chan rest her head onto her narrow shoulders.

"I don't judge people, Sayuri-chan… but I do know that you're a good person."

She could feel Sayuri shaking her head slightly. "No, I'm not."

Sakuno remembered the days when her dad would sit her on his lap while stroking her hair to make her stop crying. He would tell her that okaa-san was in heaven and watching over 'my little angel' as her dad put it. She smoothed the strands covering the girl's face and smiled warmly at the poor girl.

"You're not a bad person if you came all the way here to apologize to his mother, right?"

Sayuri blushed as Sakuno gave a gentle pat on her head, and her lips tugged up into a wobbly smile. The woman was really beautiful up-close. Sayuri never noticed that.

"U-Um… you're right… I guess… Thank you, onee-chan…"

"You can count on me."

* * *

Sayuri kicked a pebble as they both waited for a cab to take. Sakuno had told her something about repairing her car so the sixteen-year old had thought about inviting Sakuno over to her house. She liked the reporter, it felt as if Sakuno knew how she felt when she lost her mother, as if she had also gone through the pain.

"Nee-chan, do you wanna go to my house?"

Sakuno smiled apologetically. She had other plans tonight, including sitting in front of the t.v. with a tub of popcorn watching a new ghost movie she'd rented.

"I'm afraid I have to decline, Sayuri-chan."

The teenager nodded understandingly, her eyes glazed, as if she was a bit disoriented. Noticing the pale complexion Sayuri's face had at that time worried Sakuno. She gently squeezed the younger girl's shoulder.

"Sayuri-chan, are you okay?"

Said name laughed it off, her smile was wobbly as she shrugged the matter off. She focused her amber eyes to the road as a puppy trotted happily across the street, oblivious to the passing cars honking at it. A mini cooper honked and swerved away, the small tyres screeching slightly as the dog carelessly hopped to a spot.

And the black Labrador puppy stayed there, looking transfixed at something just above Sayuri's head.

Sayuri thought that the dog looked so cute staring at a spot above her head, its beady eyes glazed and its muzzle slightly wet with Sakura petals sticking onto it. She cooed and clapped her hands so that the dog would eventually do little hops towards her.

The dog yipped, and as it started to lift a small paw, Sakuno knew something wasn't right.

It was then a second too late to realize when a big truck ran over it.

Both girls stood shocked at the pool of blood in the middle of the road, a bit of scattered flesh here, bits of bleach-white bones flying over there… it was mess. What made the sight more gruesome was the fact that the puppy was groaning… or was it croaking… as most parts of its head disintegrated into nothingness, and it's miraculously in-severed tail still wiggled. The damn lifeless heap of a dog still had its tail wiggling.

Sayuri fainted then and there.

* * *

The smell of something familiar made her stir. Something was being fried. The strange sweet smell of a familiar brand of rice wafted through the small apartment. Faint giggling and hushing sounds were heard as Sayuri struggled to open her eyelids. She tried to move her fingers, and her muscles flexed as she shakily fist her right hand. The hushing and giggling abruptly stopped as she opened her eyes.

"Sayuri-chan? You okay?"

Beautiful brown eyes greeted her sight just as immediately as she opened her eyes. "O… nee…chan?"

An unladylike groan escaped Sayuri's lips as she sat up, a palm pressed against the side of her head, as if to stop her brains from spilling out her hard skull. A warm hand belonging to Sakuno rested against her back, the small hand gently caressed the girl's spine as the mattress Sayuri was lying onto shifted a bit when the older female sat next to her.

"You passed out… a-at the um… at the temple… after…um… you know…"

As if being doused by a bucket of cold water, Echizen Sayuri's head snapped up and her eyes widened.

"Th-The… p-poor puppy…" she whispered.

Then she fainted again.

Sakuno quickly got up from the bed and shook the girl's shoulders. "Sayuri-chan!"

Tomoka blinked as she neared Sakuno's bed, which now accommodated Echizen Ryoma's sister. A hand shakily tucked a strand of black hair behind the girl's ear, and as quick as lightning, she lifted an eyelid and neared her face to the fainted girl's own face, taking a better look at the amber orb. Sakuno quickly swatted away Tomoka's hand with her voice squeaking out 'Tomo-chan!'

"What were you doing, Tomo-chan?"

Ignoring Sakuno's antics, Tomoka crossed her arms beneath her well-endowed breasts. She hummed as if she had solved something that bugged her head for a while. Then she nodded.

"Yup, yup. She's the sexy Echizen Ryoma-sama's sister after all. Same eyes."

Sakuno didn't notice the extra adjective her childhood friend added, she was busy worrying over Sayuri whom just passed out for a second time.

"Tomo-chan, you shouldn't force open someone's eyelid you know."

Said name shrugged and sat Indian-style onto the floor next to the bed. She couldn't understand why would Sakuno act vehemently at something as simple as taking a peek at Sayuri's eye. She didn't see the wrong in that, though she admitted she was a bit rough when she practically yanked open Sayuri's eyelid.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever."

Sakuno ignored Tomoka's nonchalance and walked into the kitchen. She sighed contentedly as she opened the lid of the rice cooker, the sweet smell of warm rice greeting her nose. Her stomach growled, and with a little peek behind her, thirty-year old Sakuno popped some rice into her mouth using a spoon.

That didn't go well. She burned her taste buds.

Tomoka laughed out loud, amused that Sakuno got something in return for sneaking some hot rice into her mouth before it was even dinner time. The sudden burst of laughter immediately woke Sayuri from her deep slumber.

"That's what you get for sneaking around! What are you, five?"

Sakuno pouted as she chilled her burning tongue with an ice cube. "Thirty," she managed to mumble.

Tomoka's laughter stopped abruptly, making Sakuno to turn around, eyebrow raised. When she saw Sayuri popping her head into the kitchen with a weak smile on her lips, she sighed.

"Oh, Sayuri-chan…. Tomo-chan, you scared me. I thought somebody came in, one of the Teletubbies maybe."

Sayuri laughed as she heard Sakuno saying the last sentence with such a serious face. The brunette put her hands on her hips, a serious face on her undeniably cute façade.

"Really, those guys are creepy. Especially Dixie. He's too… blue."

The youngest Echizen laughed harder and pinched Sakuno's cheeks, squealing as if she just found something entertaining.

"Nee-chan, you're so cute!"

Said woman blushed so hard it made Sayuri pinch her cheeks a little bit more. Tomoka sniggered and picked up her purse from atop the television, preparing towards the front door.

"Well, since Sayuri-chan is awake, now you have company, Sakuno. Bye!"

Before Sakuno could react to the whole unexpected situation, well not really unexpected - Tomoka had left her with some other weird people so many times- the door was closed with a loud bang and then the small home was left to a red-faced Sakuno and the sister of her new crush. Well, 'crush' was an understatement.

"S-Sa-Sayuri…chan… l-let's… eat… ne?"

She tried to use food to distract the girl from her reddening cheeks, and it worked. Sayuri quickly abandoned the cheeks and swirled around in delight as she took a whiff of the warm rice.

"Yay! Japanese food!"

Sakuno didn't know what happened to the timid and meek Echizen Sayuri as she witnessed the girl stuff her mouth with rice and gobbled up every side dish her chopsticks touched. Brown eyes blinked helplessly as Sayuri practically inhaled the food from her bowl and the small dishes, stray grains of rice stuck to the corners of her mouth and her chin. It was as if the girl had diminished into a five-year old.

"Umai, umai, umaaaai! This is so good, nee-chan!"

A heartbeat passed when finally Sakuno smiled warmly at the girl sitting at the opposite side of the small table, her small hands rubbing her belly in a contented gesture. Sayuri was happy again. Maybe not fully, but she was being more relaxed than when she'd first met Sakuno.

Then Sayuri burped.

Okay, the girl was a little bit too relaxed. Seeing Sayuri laugh it off, Sakuno couldn't help but laugh along too.

"Nee-chan…"

Sakuno looked up from her bowl to meet with Sayuri's amber gaze. The girl wanted to say something, she knew it. But somehow someone's cell phone rang. Reluctantly, Sayuri averted her gaze and answered her phone.

Then her face immediately lit up again.

"Nii-chan!"

Ryuzaki's hand froze in mid-air as she heard Sayuri's squeal. It was Ryoma who called. Somehow, she felt as if her favorite rice was nothing more than sandpaper going down her windpipe. She coughed, bad. Sayuri turned to Sakuno and while she patted Sakuno's back, her mouth was on full chatter mode.

Sakuno was about to calm down from her nerve attack when suddenly Sayuri said the inevitable.

"Um, pick me up at Sakuno nee-chan's house."

The world felt as if it was spinning when she tried to stand up. God, no way this was happening to her. Why did the mention of his name brought queasy feelings in her tummy? Of course she knew she was in love with him, she wasn't stupid. But having a guy, a hot guy nonetheless, come to her house at just about anytime made her nervous as a cat in a tub of freezing water. No, make that a cat in a tub of freezing ICE water.

She silently finished her own dinner when Sayuri sauntered towards the television. The younger girl picked up a CD case, and examined the title of the ghost movie.

"Nee-chan, you're watching this?"

Sakuno nodded, her head still thinking about Ryoma coming over to her place. Then she realized. Why was she so worked up about Ryoma coming over anyway? It wasn't as if he was coming over because he wanted to see her. Pfft. Tough luck. He was going to pick up his sister.

Sakuno relaxed a bit.

The hell with it all.

She washed the dishes as quickly as she could, and cheerily brought out the tub of popcorn to share with Sayuri while they sat and watch the movie together. They didn't forget to switch off the lights.

* * *

Ryoma didn't know knocking on the door of a woman was hard. It never felt difficult for him before. But it was different at that time, because he was bringing along a friend for the owner of the shabby-looking apartment. A friend with an orange body and black stripes, and had beady little black eyes with long eyelashes and whiskers.

Who knew tigers have eyelashes?

He lifted a hand, and hesitated. He should've just left the plushie in his car parked at the curb because he'd never given a gift to a girl before. But when he'd seen the little tiger he thought of nothing else but Sakuno and her nick name. He cursed inwardly at this uncharacteristic gesture of his, and rapped at the door twice, and waited. He could hear screams from inside, and he considered barging through the door, in case something bad happened to Sakuno and his sister. A nanosecond after, however, the door opened a fraction and Sakuno's brown-head popped out.

Her shoulder-length hair was let down and tousled, with some strands sticking out and covered an eye, her exposed eye was glazed as if she had just woken up from a deep sleep, and her pink lips appeared fuller. The dimmed light from the doorway lit her head from behind, creating a soft glow around her, and when she smiled sleepily at him, it made him check his vital signs to see if he had actually died and gone to heaven.

Pinch.

Nope. Still alive.

"Ryoma-kun, you're here."

Never in his life had he heard a voice so soft and warming as hers. Even when he'd known some deal of women in his life, he had never heard any voice like Sakuno's when they were…ahm… uhm… in the deep throes of… ahm… uhm… passion. Truthfully, her mere voice made his sex-deprived body respond weirdly yet pleasantly. Or was it just because he'd been deprived for like, three months ever since he laid his eyes on Sakuno after he'd seen her in her cow pajamas?

Okay, he needs some intervention here.

"Of course I'm here."

He said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could muster.

"Come on in, we were just finishing a movie."

She led him inside to the dark living room, a half-asleep Sayuri greeting him half-heartedly while her eyes were trained onto the t.v. screen. She had a blanket draped over her head. Ryoma's eyes glanced at the glowing screen.

"A ghost movie?"

Sakuno nodded. "How did you come here? I didn't see your bike."

Without looking at her, Ryoma answered as he went to the kitchen and switched on the lights. "My car's repaired."

This made Sakuno frown. "Why is it that _your_ car's repaired first? I won't get mine till the end of July."

He smirked as he leaned against the counter, and the tiger was safely placed on top the microwave, still unnoticed by Sakuno.

"Because I'm Echizen Ryoma." As if that explained everything.

Sakuno rolled her eyes and her frown was gone. Her smile replaced the frown as she noticed the tiger perched atop the microwave, its little beady eyes looking back at her innocently.

"Hey you. How did you get here?" She walked towards Ryoma and picked up the tiger.

"Obviously I brought it here." He replied as he let his eyes fall on her.

Sakuno blinked as she turned to him. "Why?"

He wished he had his cap with him as he cleared his throat. God, this was hard.

"I saw it on my way here… and I remembered the guys calling you that."

A blush colored her cheeks as she smiled up at him. "Thank you."

He couldn't help but stare and swallow. No one had ever thanked him sincerely. Sure, the guys had thanked him before. But no one had actually looked at him in the eyes and thank him properly. He had never done anything really worth thanking for anyway. Yet Sakuno had thanked him so sincerely even though it was just a plushie. He let his eyes stay on her as she fussed over the little tiger as if it was a living kitten. He noticed that she wasn't wearing black, instead she had on a pair of pink cotton pajamas with small red strawberry prints. She was even wearing a pair of cow home slippers. He began to wonder if she had a fetish towards cows. He could live with that.

"Do tigers have eyelashes?" She asked, while a finger twirled a strand of the fake whiskers.

"Who knows." He answered off-offhandedly.

After a few moments of checking out the toy plushie in her hands, Sakuno thought about her talk with Nanjiroh and Sayuri about Rinko. As she contemplated whether to tell him about it or not, his deep voice stirred her thoughts away.

"Sayuri told me about the cemetery. How did you bring her here?"

"I hailed a cab, and the driver helped me carry her."

Ryoma looked down at the tip of her slippers before he replied hesitantly. "Thanks for bringing her here."

Sakuno laughed it off. "It was no biggie. She was good company anyway."

He nodded. True, Sayuri was good company. Even when he found it annoying that his sister loves to talk non-stop and chatter about weird stuff. But it was he himself he was unsure of. No matter how hard he tried, he could never be a replacement for Sayuri's mother. He could never make her tell him what a brother should hear about a sister. He never knew her favorite dish, her favorite color or even more importantly, her size. It kind of worried him to see her squeezing herself into small jeans and dresses.

"She's always moody."

Sakuno's laughter died as she saw that same glint in his eyes as they turned to her. It was sadness. Hopelessness. She knew his problem. She knew that he was trying very hard to be a good brother to Sayuri despite going against his own ways.

"Why are you saying that, Ryoma-kun?"

His lips tugged up a fraction.

"She misses her mother. I don't know what to do."

With that, Sakuno placed the tiger on the counter and wrapped her arms around his lean figure. He stood there transfixed as he felt her warmth seep through her clothes into him.

"There's nothing you _can _do. She lost her mother. I lost mine too and I know that it hurts. Just be there for her when she needs you the most."

Her breath was warm when she spoke against his chest.

"I'm not the greatest brother."

She giggled and looked up into his eyes. "You're just fine the way you are. I can see that you're a good brother. Sayuri-chan told me that."

It took a moment for her to stop hugging him and she quickly backed away, apologizing to him. He fought the urge to pull her against him and feel her warmth again. He didn't know why, but she made him feel better.

"Is Sayuri asleep?" He asked as he walked to the dark living room.

"I think so." Sakuno whispered as she checked up on the sleeping girl.

She turned off the television, letting the lights from the kitchen and doorway to illuminate her small apartment. Ryoma had carried the sleeping Sayuri into his car and came back into the house after he locked the doors of his Land Cruiser. He didn't know why he came back, but his legs were acting as if they had a mind of their own.

Sakuno had her back turned to him as she sorted the books and papers on her working table by the window overseeing the small shops he'd drove pass just a few minutes ago. The tiger was still in one hand as her other hand sorted out the clutter on the table.

"Ryuzaki," he called out, still unsure of what to say as she turned around to face him.

"Yes?"

"I'm going now."

She hesitated for a while before she turned around to see him off with the best smile she could muster.

"Okay. Thanks again for the tiger."

Ryoma nodded as a reply, and with the foreign heavy feeling in his chest, he turned around towards the door. It was a few seconds later when he heard Sakuno call out to him and he turned around. She walked to him and tiptoed to speak into his ear.

"Be careful."

Then she gently kissed his cheek. It was nothing too passionate like the kiss he shared with her before, it was just a peck.

But it was enough to make him realize.

He was in love with the archangel of gloom and doom.

* * *

**A/N: Yosh, that's it for the tenth chapter. Hope you guys liked it. It's not much, but I'll promise to try to write better chapters. Just tell me if there's anything wrong in here. Hugs and kisses!**


	12. Ch11: Unpredictable

**Game and Match: Sakuno?  
**

**A/N: Haha! Sorry 'bout the delay. I thought I've updated two chapters but it seemed that I missed out this one. Anyway, as usual, I hope you'll like this chapter and the chapters to come. This story's coming to an end... someday... Oh! And I just got my DL! AHAHA! XD Demo ne…. Sadly, the car's missing a steering wheel. Bummer. :(**

**DISCLAIMER: Obviously, dear, I don't own POT or the characters. **

**Ch11: Unpredictable  
**

Echizen Ryoma never would have thought that a mere woman could make heads turn as soon as she enters a room. Especially a certain brown-haired woman named Ryuzaki Sakuno. He never thought that the woman would pique interest in his rowdy team mates, not with her smart ass mouth and her witty responses, and of course, her dark boring clothes. He never thought that he _could_ be wrong about his first impressions towards others. Especially now, when SHE came breezing into the locker room ninety minutes before the game started, wearing a red silk blouse with the first two buttons left undone and a black pencil skirt which stopped inches before her knees that fitted her curves, making everyone realize that she actually had a really nice butt. Except Ryoma, he knew about her butt when he saw her in the cow pajamas. But the black pantyhose she was wearing _did_ make him realize; for a short person, she did have nice legs.

Ryuzaki Sakuno surely was unpredictable.

And he never thought that a rookie could make him kinda – ahem - sort of – ahem – jealous… when the Chinese guy walked right up to Sakuno and complimented her looks. He couldn't really understand what the young tennis player said to her, but he did know Bobby said something about her blouse. She laughed, and BOY he knew he was in trouble because her laugh was so nice it made him forget about their next opponent for a short ten seconds before he snapped out.

The guys were busy getting ready with their shoes and rackets, but they had their eyes trained on Ryuzaki while their mouths busy joking to her about having a wardrobe makeover. Vlad, being the perv bastard he was –well, Vlad wasn't the _only_ pervert there anyway- joked about having a dinner date with her after the game.

Which made Ryoma wonder for a second, had Ryuzaki ever gone to a real date? Because she was blushing as if the Russian had really meant it. Or did Vlad really mean what he said? God, he was being jealous _and _paranoid. He didn't even realize Momo was sniggering behind him.

"Yo, Echizen."

Not looking up from his shoes, which he was struggling to lace because he couldn't keep from trying to burn a hole through the back of Vlad's skull, he ignored Momo. And being Momo, the Power House of the team ignored the black aura emanating from the captain and plopped next to Ryoma.

"Oi, Echizen."

Without turning to answer Momo, Ryoma replied with the most neutral voice he could muster at the moment.

"What?"

The Captain could feel Momo grinning at him mischievously, as if knowing that his amber gaze was trained onto the big-mouthed Russian while his fingers were trying hard not to accidentally tangle his wrists together. He didn't know if he was considered lucky or not, because he was right. The wide grin on Momo's face was definitely there on his bruised face.

"She looks good today. Sengoku had bet that she's wearing garters. What d'ya think?"

Ryoma stopped his hands, and averted his daggers to Momo instead. If people didn't know him better, they would've thought the two teammates were talking about something tennis-related, what with Ryoma's unchanged bored expression. For people who DO know him would've known that Ryoma was thinking of ways to rip off Momo's eyes staring appreciatively towards the brown-haired female menace in the middle of the room. The menace who he knew was purposely tempting him with those clothes. Goddammit, why did it have to be red.

"There's nothing to look at anyway, you moron." His statement came out in a dangerously low voice, because he knew he was lying to himself.

There was a LOT to look at Ryuzaki Sakuno the moment she stepped into the room with those new clothes.

Momo wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. "You're saying that, but your eyes are on her."

The Dragons' Captain straightened up, ready to counter Momo's words when Manager Inui Sadaharu walked into the room with his infamous dark green notebook. His glasses were gleaming in the creepiest way only he could manage.

"Attention, guys."

The players, some of them still in their towels, gathered around Inui whom stood next to Sakuno. The huge height difference between the reporter and manager made her to look way up to answer something Inui was saying. The manager looked up from Sakuno's face as Eiji came bouncing about, demanding the reason Inui called them. The acrobatic player was jumping about as if he wouldn't give a damn that his towel was dangerously sliding off his hips.

"Nyaa, Inui! Are you gonna brief us on the next game? We haven't been doing this for months!"

The others nodded in agreement. Said manager cleared his throat, pushed up his glasses for the dramatized effect, and began his briefing.

"Yes, we haven't done this for a while. But I assure you that our next opponents are making a comeback with some new moves. I've even brought their new set of data, here in this book."

As he flipped through a few pages and began his briefing, Sakuno's eyes wandered to the faces around her, their figures towering over her as most of them tried to peek into the mysterious book Inui held. She spotted Ryoma, the only player standing away from the crowd, but close enough to hear Inui's ramblings. He was leaning against the door of Bobby's locker, arms crossed over his chest and his cap obscuring most of his face as he set his gaze onto the floor with the Dragons logo in the middle. As Inui answered one of Oishi's questions, Ryoma lifted his face and locked gazes with Sakuno. She smiled at him, and his face didn't move a muscle.

"…and again Momo, your backhand needs to be covered by someone with a better grip than yours. So if you haven't forgotten yet, you're gonna play doubles with Kaidoh. Don't give me that look, or I'll give you my juice."

Momo grumbled something and Kaidoh grudgingly grumbled something back. It was no secret that the two had issues with each other, but they played doubles well together. Tezuka had to give them that.

"Oh, and another thing… Kikumaru."

"Hai?" He replied while distractedly looking at the spikes on Inui's head.

"You're gonna have to save your acrobatics until you and Oishi get started on your third set into the game. Got that?"

Questions were being thrown, and Inui just remained quiet as Eiji bellowed. The manager pushed up his glasses again, and cleared his throat to silence the players when Sakuno cheerfully spoke up.

"Ano, Eiji-san. The doubles players you're going against have limited stamina, and Inui-san thought that you might as well start using your acrobatics when they get tired so as to not let them react fast enough to return your shots. Also..." She paused and let Bobby hold her cup of to-go coffee before rummaging through her bag to bring out a small notepad.

She flipped some pages when she continued, "... there's this new player that joined the Okinawa Devils today, looks like he has one good drop shot, which was why he'd kept most of his matches finished in approximately fifteen minutes and forty-five seconds."

Inui nodded, and had a proud grin on his lips. _Good girl. I taught you well._

She finally stopped her ramblings and looked up from her notepad to see confused eyes staring back at her, as if she had grown horns on her head. She brought a hand up to feel the top of her head too, just to be on the safe side.

"Um... Is there anything wrong?" She asked timidly, while Bobby absent-mindedly gave back her coffee.

Ryoma already had an eyebrow raised as he also looked at her. As soon as she had talked, it was as if an alien had landed in the middle of the room, talking as if she even knew what she was babbling about. A cute as hell alien. With a red blouse and a nice-fitting black skirt, and possibly garters. Again, Sengoku had put his bet that she was wearing black _silky _garters. The room was so quiet they could even hear the clock ticking. It was a few seconds when suddenly Kirihara spoke up.

"Oi, onna. How are _you _sure about these stuff?"

Sakuno made a pair of imaginary binoculars.

"Inui-san and I went data scouting during the last two nights at their home game. It was pretty hush-hush… kind of like a mission." She ended that with a childish grin.

Surely, Ryuzaki Sakuno was so very unpredictable.

The room erupted with laughter seconds after that, finally realizing that their Tiger was becoming one of Inui's so-called subordinates.

Ryoma couldn't help the smirk on his lips as he walked to his stall to finish some stuff while the guys were patting Sakuno's small head, saying things like 'awesome' and 'atta girl'. She was laughing, her voice rang pleasantly in his ears.

Just as he zipped up his jersey, he heard her footsteps. Oh yeah, he forgot, she was still wearing her black Doc Martens. The boots really didn't fit in with the clothes, but who was he to comment. Obviously she loved those boots as much as she loved her glasses, which she'd replaced with her contact lenses for the moment.

"Ne, Ryoma-kun."

He turned around, and immediately he thought that she looked better up-close. Plus, he was one and a half foot higher than her so he could clearly see the top of her chest, courtesy of the first two undone buttons on her blouse. Damn, she was such a distraction.

"Are you purposely dressing up like that to impress me?"

Sakuno was caught off-guard by the seemingly nonchalant question he directed at her. It was part true, and she didn't know what to answer than to look at herself when she noticed his eyes lingered around her chest area. She gasped and quickly buttoned up her blouse. Ryoma raised a brow. Well, the free show was over.

"Wh-What… d-do you m-mean… to impress you? Of course not! D-Do you think I have the t-time to impress you? I-I don't see the reason to impress y-you, or anyone of that matter! Kami-sama, you're not just delusional, you're a narcissist! You Hentai-san!"

His eyes nearly bulged out at her outburst.

Hentai? He wasn't a pervert like his dad, he just appreciates nice-looking women. And what's with the –san?

Narcissist? He was definitely NOT a narcissist!

He was just aware that women tend to impress him in so much ways.

He was definitely, positively NOT self-loving!

And delusional?

"I am by no means delusional, woman."

Sakuno frowned and rested her hands on her hips. "Am too!"

"You're saying that as if I'm from the asylum."

The reporter shook her head. "I didn't say that. I just said you're delusional. You're overreacting."

Ryoma smirked. Now was the time to get back at her. "You were overreacting too."

Her hands dropped to her side, her face was incredulous as she stared at him. "W-What?"

Echizen Ryoma, the man every woman desired, leaned in towards her and said dangerously low to her ear.

"You said you were not here to impress me, but you overreacted. That means you _are _here to impress me. Isn't that right, Ace?"

It was fifteen minutes till their game started, and while the players were starting to empty the locker room, Ryoma was busy teasing Sakuno. And he gave himself credit for that, because her responses were priceless. After she opened and shut her mouth repeatedly as if she was a fish, she finally flattened her palms against his chest to push him away from her. She shoved once, but he didn't budge.

"I am not-" She shoved harder, her cheeks growing to a new hue of red, either from exhaustion or embarrassment.

"-impressing-" she said through clenched teeth as she pushed harder, so hard that her heels lifted off the ground.

When he didn't even budge a step, she huffed and looked up into his face, despite the red blotches on her cheeks were far from fading away.

"-you." She finished, by the time she said that though, she noticed the naughty smirk on his lips.

He slung his tennis bag over one shoulder, and before he left her, he managed to lightly pat her cheek with a hand.

"Good. Because there's nothing to be impressed at, honestly."

Sakuno could feel her brow twitch at that.

Nothing. To. Be. Impressed. At…?

Did that mean she was unattractive to his eyes, even when Tomoka had practically begged her to go shopping for a change of wardrobe? She even donated her old, boring clothes to the Goodwill!

Balling her hands into tight fists, Sakuno managed to grit out, "Big dumb kabocha," before she walked out of the locker room, feeling very insulted and severely ticked off.

She had even bought new sets of lingerie, not that she would want him to see anyway. It was more of feeling a sense of womanly pride, as Tomoka said it.

"Ryuzaki," Ryoma called out and halted her steps.

Without turning around, she managed a clipped, "What?"

She could practically see the annoying smirk on his face as he asked, "Are you wearing garters?"

Startled beyond belief, she turned around to give him an abashed face before her mouth spoke for herself.

"Pantyhose."

When Ryoma _slightly _grinned like the sinner he was, she realized life had just been so unfair to her ever since she'd decided to walk up to him to call him a big dumb kabocha. He finally shrugged and left her by herself inside the locker room. Without forgetting to tell her something; the last part had her face redden to full blast.

"Then I'm right. Sengoku was wrong."

* * *

Sakuno had the camcorder clenched in her grip as she thought of ways to get back at the menace slash tennis captain who was sitting on the waiting bench situated just a meter away from her seat. When she had gotten to the best part, a hand tapped her shoulder. Letting out the breath she didn't know she held, she turned around to greet the person with a smile. Her eyes however widened as she recognized the amber eyes peeking out from the sunglasses the person wore.

"Nee-chan!" The girl excitedly squealed and quickly plopped next to the still-surprised Sakuno. All thoughts regarding Ryoma were instantly kicked to the curb.

Sakuno giggled as Sayuri adjusted the glasses comfortably against her nose bridge, the bun tying her black hair at the back of her head had some strands of hair sticking out. It wasn't as if others wouldn't recognize Ryoma's sister already, for the youngest Echizen had the VIP pass that was clipped to her blue Care Bear T-shirt.

"Did I miss nii-chan's game? I promised him I would come. Oh, and you look good, nee-chan!"

Sakuno nodded towards the players. "Thanks. No, they just started on the doubles…"

The reporter tilted her head while her hands still held the camcorder as she studied the sixteen-year old.

"Don't you have school?"

Sayuri looked at her wide-eyed –not that Sakuno could see anyway- and giggled before turning her attention back towards the Momo-Kaidoh pair on the court.

"No, silly. It's Saturday."

Sakuno mouthed an 'oh' before she too focused her attention towards the last few sets of the first doubles match.

There was something odd about the match though, because the Dragons weren't competing with one of the big names in Japan. Their opponents – the Okinawa Devils - were what people would prefer calling country bumpkins because of their accent. They also played with such brute force that even Momo found troublesome, by the look of things as he furrowed his brows more often than usual. The other team members sitting by the side benches were also focused on the game, and instead of throwing spits around and provoking the opponents like they used to when they played in Europe, their faces were serious as hell. Sakuno knew the Okinawan players were quite good, but were they too good that even one of the best teams in Japan had its players sit up straight as they watched the game intently?

And Coach Tezuka was replaced with an older coach –much, much older than Nanjiroh- whom the players introduced to her as Ojii. The man was really old, but she was surprised that his sights were so clear that he even murmured to Ryoma something about the troublesome technique the Okinawan players used, also known as the Okinawan Martial Arts…. Or something like that. She'd seen them use the technique when she went data scouting with Inui, and she knew that it was a nasty skill.

"OJIII!"

The simultaneous yelling of the old coach's name rang through the indoor stadium and Sakuno's eyes quickly snapped away from her thoughts. Ojii was apparently knocked down by a tennis ball that had somehow flown across the opponent's side of the net and landed on the old man's cheek. Both Kaidoh and Momo stared in disbelief at the grinning Okinawan doubles pair.

"Oi! KUSOTTARE!" Sayuri cried out as the old man groaned in pain when Ryoma crouched to check on the coach.

"Ojii, you okay?" His deep voice had a ring of concern towards the old man.

When he was replied with another heart-wrenching groan, Ryoma clenched his fists. The crowd was silent as the paramedics came and heaved the unconscious coach onto the stretcher to be taken to the infirmary. As Ryoma watched the disappearing figure of the paramedics, it was still eerily silent. Too silent. Even the umpire was unable to voice out anything, too shocked for the unexpected turn of events. Then the silence was broken when one of the doubles player chuckled.

He shrugged his shoulders as eyes turned to him. "Gomenchai. My hand just slipped, you know."

Sakuno's hands clenched. "Sayuri-chan," she said, her voice was an octave lower as she handed her camcorder to the young girl, her brown eyes never leaving the court as she stood up. "take care of my camcorder," She finished, and with Sayuri's questioning gaze lingering on her back, she jumped off the separator and landed clumsily onto the tennis court.

Sayuri gasped as Sakuno smoothed the wrinkles off her blouse and skirt, without taking her brown gaze off the Okinawan.

"Nee-chan… No way. No freakin' way…"

The others however, didn't notice as the reporter walked steadily towards the tan-skinned opponent.

When the seemingly young player met with Ryoma's burning gaze, he smirked. "Sheesh. Tokyo people are so- Ow!"

Eyes blinked confusingly as they witnessed the lean figure of the Okinawan player bent down when his ear was brought down forcefully by a small hand. Her fingers were pressed so hard into the flesh of his ear as she twisted the flimsy piece of cartilage. Her face was red with anger as she looked at the guy squarely in the eyes.

"How DARE you do that to an old man?"

Collective gasps and whispers filled the stadium as the Okinawan cried out in pain when Sakuno dragged the obviously taller man towards the net to meet with the Dragons' Captain.

"O-Oi! Onna! Lemme go!"

Sakuno tugged again at his ear, eliciting another cry of agony, and some of the Dragons' players also held instinctively to their ears as if they were feeling the pain too.

"DO NOT Oi at me! Now, apologize! Don't you ever think that being from the countryside means that you CAN act like one here! Be professional when you're dealing in your matches! Why can't you just play fair and square?"

Ryoma was already not paying attention to the rude Okinawan player on the other side of the green net, but his eyes were solely focusing on the incredible woman turning down a bigger male with just the twist of his ear. He did NOT want his ears turn as red as the guy's ear at that moment. She wasn't even aware when the crowd started to cheer for her when the cameras focused on her cute face, brows furrowing over big brown eyes and her cheeks red of fury. He couldn't help the grin forming on his face.

The brown-haired reporter finally let go of the bigger male when he suddenly said something that caught Sakuno off-guard.

"You Tokyo bitch! Who do you think you are? Go home and cry in your mom's lap for all I care!"

That really wiped off the grin on Ryoma's face.

But when Sakuno's knuckles made a rather brutal contact with the player's cheek, his grin came back as quickly as it had come off.

"How dare you use crude language on me? I'm a reporter!"

Ryoma raised a brow at this, as if her statement of being a reporter had anything to do with this.

The umpire finally came down from his bench and blew on his whistle, making the crowd turn quiet again.

"Okay," he sighed into the small microphone clipped to his collar before continuing, "This doubles match is officially stopped so that further arguments would not take place. An extra singles match will be played to compensate for this faulty match, so both teams must come up with their extra players in for the last game… IF this whole match ends up in a tie."

It took a few moments of silence and then suddenly the umpire pointed to Sakuno.

"Ma'am, would you please be seated in your position before you came down here?"

Sakuno nodded and took a few moments to narrow her eyes towards the Okinawan man who she'd twisted an ear, as if her eyes were the most intimidating glare one could face. Ryoma smirked at this, and refrained from patting her head as she passed by him to climb back, albeit clumsily, over the separator towards her seat just a few meters behind their waiting bench, sitting obediently between Sayuri and a dumbstruck Horio.

His smirk lifted a notch as she made a thumbs-up to him, mouthing an 'Ganbare!' to the whole team.

His smirk didn't go unnoticed though.

Horio grinned as Sakuno retrieved her camcorder from Sayuri and poked the reporter in the ribs.

"That was cool. You could've gotten the players disqualified though."

Sakuno smiled apologetically, the flush on her face hadn't diminished one bit from all the euphoria. She didn't know getting so worked up over something would cost her a red face. She smoothed down her hair with a hand let out a breath.

"Sorry, I was so mad."

The young manager chuckled. "S'okay."

They were busy taking about who would replace the Dragons' coach when Tomoka tapped her shoulder from behind.

"Tomo-chan! You came!" Her eyes widened along with her smile as her best friend looked around for a seat. There was an empty one next to Horio.

"Of course! I promised you, didn't I? You even gave me a ticket!"

Sakuno leaned back a fraction to give way to Horio. "Tomo-chan, this is Horio Satoshi-kun. Horio-kun, this is my best friend, Osakada Tomoka."

The two exchanged hellos and Tomoka squeezed herself to sit next to the manager with the odd-colored hair. Sakuno passed a soda to Tomoka and saw that the two were making short conversation. She raised a brow, because it wasn't likely that Horio was her best friend's type of man. But then, Tomoka seems to enjoy talking to the guy. And she nearly laughed when Horio looked like a dazed schoolboy when Tomoka flashed him one of her charming smiles. Again, it wasn't likely Tomoka would charm a man as weird as Horio.

Sayuri hurriedly tapped Sakuno's knee.

"Nee-chan! It's Onii-chan's turn! KYAA! NII-CHAN GANBARE!"

Sakuno laughed as Ryoma turned around looking blankly at his sister, then he blinked, as if not remembering how his sister came to be there, just next to Sakuno.

Sayuri waved to him again, shouting out encouragements, earning a nod from Ryoma. He turned around, his back to the crowd as he lowered the brim of his cap. Sakuno barely contained her giggle as she noticed that Ryoma was actually grinning like a little boy.

* * *

He just came out of the shower wearing a towel around his waist when Sayuri busted into the locker room with Sakuno's hand being pulled along. After telling the reporter about something, the sixteen-year old left Sakuno blinking at the door of the locker room, still disoriented. She shook her head, and turned round as she heard Nanjiroh call out to her. Her eyes met him for a moment as she turned her head, and if he hadn't been keen enough, he wouldn't even notice the way her eyes dropped to the tattoo on his abdomen.

Ryoma smirked as he noticed the blush on her cheeks when she quickly looked away to answer Nanjiroh.

"Yes, Coach Nanoji?"

The old Coach had a Dragons' jersey in his hands, and it made Sakuno wonder about that new player Kevin Schneider was planning to hire for the next season. But the jersey was quite small for a man to wear. Maybe the new guy was small-framed? Curious, she pointed a finger at the red, black and white jersey.

"Is Mr. Schneider taking the new player? Because I think it's a little small for a man."

Nanjiroh blinked and eyed the jersey in his hands. A grin formed on his face, making Sakuno blink confusedly in turn. He made a short whistle and immediately caught the attention of the talking players. Several degrees of undress greeted her as they gathered around her and Coach Nanjiroh. Ryoma leaned against a doorframe nearest to Nanjiroh, already in his navy shorts.

When Nanjiroh held up Sakuno's hand as if she'd just beaten the world's greatest wrestler, she blinked more rapidly. Her eyes went wide as Nanjiroh made his announcement.

"As you all know, Miss Ryuzaki here came here as a stranger. However, after what happened today, I'm sure everyone agrees with me that we can now proudly say that Miss Ryuzaki Sakuno is one of us Dragons."

He let go of her hand and presented to her the jersey he held. "And hereby we give you this jersey. Welcome to the pack, Sakuno-chan!"

Acceptance.

That was one word she never would have dreamed of ever since she lost her beloved mother and grandmother. But there she was, Coach Nanjiroh holding up her hand above her head, proudly declaring her, the ugly-duckling in the whole class since elementary, the oddest color in a stack of identical Lego blocks... as one of them.

It took a while for her to process the information as Nanjiroh let down her hand to help her put on the slightly loose jersey over her small shoulders. When she felt the warmth the jersey brought over her small frame, she couldn't hold back.

Her head hung, everyone became deadly silent.

Why were her shoulders sagging? Was she sad? Was she upset? Didn't the jersey fit her?

But then she lifted her head, and she had the widest smile she could muster at that time, her lips wobbling and clear tears streamed down her cheeks. She managed a choked 'thank you' for them when her small hands tried to dry off the stubborn tears. She hiccuped and thanked them again.

"Th-Thank you... guys... Really... thank you..."

The guys laughed and most of them patted her head, and then Momo trapped her head in a headlock while he messed her hair. She laughed, her eyes were leaking and her hair was so messy. Some strands of brown hair was stuck to her cheeks as she tried to wipe the broken dam hidden behind her eye lids. Her face was a real mess. But Ryome couldn't help but admire her all the more. Because she was laughing wholeheartedly. He began to wonder if she was ever this happy before.

If others asked him what would make him happy besides tennis years ago, he would answer without a doubt that he had nothing else to be happy at. But when he looked at her again, trying to squirm away from Momo's grasp, he began to question himself. Would it be worth it if he made Sakuno smile every day, if he made her laugh every single day.

Eiji gave her a bear hug, squeezing her small frame as tightly as he could. She would have been suffocated if Oishi hadn't pulled him away from the still crying-while-laughing Sakuno. He saw Inui gently squeeze her shoulder and said something to her. The next thing Ryoma knew, she turned to him and gave a beaming smile.

It gave him no choice to smile back.

It was a lift of the corners of his mouth, but it was definitely one of his hardly-earned genuine smile.

* * *

Ryoma was still just wearing his navy shorts when the others have emptied the locker room. He sat on a bench near his locker and stared off into space. He needed time to think alone, and he thought that it was best if he stayed in the locker room. From the clock on the wall, he knew it was past eleven. How long was he there, he wondered. The game finished hours ago and it went normally, if they didn't take into account of what happened in the first doubles match. The Dragons won, but he Okinawan players were good. He himself had nearly stretched his own limit. He'd nearly played for more than an hour, and if he'd gone for another half an hour, he couldn't be sure his knees would hold up.

"You really are troublesome, aren't you…" he mumbled to himself as a hand covered a knee.

He really needed something cold on his knees right now.

"Here, Ryoma-kun."

He looked up and met gazes with Sakuno. She had her hair let down, and it was still moist from a late-night shower.

Wait, she was in her grey pullover hoodie and sweatpants.

"Did you come from home?" he asked as he took the can of Ponta from her and put the chilled can to his knee.

Sakuno shrugged, and held out her cell phone. "Sayuri-chan said you're not home. I saw you staying here after the game, so I figured you might be here."

He nodded, his eyes kept preoccupied to the Ponta pressed onto his knee. "Thanks." He mumbled.

A hand pushed the strands covering his forehead, and he looked up again to see her smile. "I should thank _you, _for recommending the jersey. Inui-san told me the team forced you to convince Mr. Schneider for an extra jersey."

He wasn't really forced, Eiji and Bobby kept pestering him and he'd done that to keep them from hovering over him. But that wasn't his sole reason anyway. He'd really thought that she deserved something from the team, for keeping up with the team's ridiculous banters.

She withdrew her hand when he kept his eyes on hers. She laughed sheepishly.

"S-sorry, I just thought that your hair was bothering you so uh… I um… Oh, I forgot my glasses… silly me… "

"You deserved it."

She stopped her babbling and blushed when a grin was starting to form on his lips. When he stood up, his body was so near to hers, that if she leaned a fraction she could just touch his tattoo. Her eyes trailed down his lean chest, following the contours of his torso down to the black horseshoe tattoo peeking out from the waistband of his navy shorts. The strands of her brown hair tickled his chest as she kept her eyes on his tattoo, wondering if his tattoo had hurt when he got it done.

"Like what you see?" His voice was venomously deep that it made her breath hitch.

His hand removed the strands of hair tickling his chest and brought up her chin so that she would look at him in the face. He wasn't smirking like he often did, his eyes didn't have the mischievous glint like they used to. He seemed serious?

Was he going to kiss her? Her? The Ryuzaki Sakuno in a hoodie and sweatpants?

His eyes dropped to her lips, and he wondered for a flash of moment if her lips would taste as sweet as they had been when he first kissed her. He didn't know since when he'd been itching to hold her, to kiss her. She was driving him crazy with all this lovey dovey stuff, because he had never felt the same way towards a woman before.

Would she kiss back if he kissed her?

His hand moved to caress her cheeks, bringing a pretty blush to her cheeks. If he wasn't so serious he would have smirked at the blush. He wanted to kiss her, but he couldn't stop his inner cynical thoughts.

_Do you deserve her?_

His hand froze.

"Ryoma-kun?" Her voice was soft. Soothing, even.

Said name clenched his other hand, and forced his legs to step back. The hand that caressed her cheek dropped to his side. He muttered the first thing that came into mind.

"Interview."

"What, Ryoma-kun?"

Ryoma ran a hand through his dark hair and nearly groaned out of frustration.

"Tomorrow's Sunday. Sayuri said she's going to hang out with you."

Sakuno blinked, her face didn't conceal how confused she was. "...And?"

A weird sound from the hallway made both heads turn to the closed door of the locker room. Ryoma was the one to speak up first, turning around to put his things into his tennis bag.

"That's the guards. I told them to lock up the other parts except this room. And since you're coming to my apartment to drop Sayuri off, stay for a while. Bring your questions."

She didn't know whether to be surprised that he offered an interview, or happy that he actually agreed to have her interview him. It was overwhelming that all she could do at that time was to say something very intelligent.

"Oh. Okay."

A few minutes passed before Sakuno decided she should leave him to himself. She bowed politely, though she knew he couldn't see anyway, and reluctantly walked out of the room.

_Stop her._

His hands stopped as he placed a racket into his bag. Should he? Didn't his inner voice questioned him if he deserved her?

He sighed and pulled out a towel.

He needed another shower.

* * *

**A/N: This is it for my eleventh chapter. Sorry for the delay. (bows deeply) Hope you like it and keep reviewing! Hugs and kisses! XD**

**KUSOTTARE ; Literally translated as 'you shitty man'. Obviously, this is an insult.**

**GOMENCHAI ; Okinawan dialect which means 'sorry'.  
**


	13. Ch12: Interview and Revelation

**Game and Match: Sakuno?  
**

**A/N: I missed you guys! Here's the twelfth chapter, and I've spent quite a time figuring out the scenes to be put in. There'll absolutely be RyoSaku fluff, but no family moments from Sakuno's side. Sorry a million. Well, I did update, right? And that's what matters right now. Please enjoy! Hugs and kisses!**

* * *

**WARNING: Okay, I need to put this warning because there will be a scene in this chapter whereby the rating will be bordering M. But for some, it might still be in the T region… just to be on the safe side, if you don't like steamy scenes, don't read the second last part of this chapter.**

**Ch12: Interview and Revelation**

Some blusher on her cheeks, a sneeze there… and done.

Sakuno looked at herself in the mirror after she had taken Tomoka's advice to 'slap some powder on'. But she thought she overdid it a little, because she had taken the advice to heart and did as Tomoka literally told her to do: slap some powder on her face.

And she didn't really recognize the clown looking back at her from the mirror.

She never knew she could be this pitiful.

Sighing, Sakuno decided to wash and rub her face clean, dry it, and apply her usual lip gloss and some compact powder. She tried to glare at the pallets of green, blue, purple and red powder sitting on the dressing table, but they were a present from Tomoka when her best friend heard about the interview. Sakuno raised a brow as she noticed the price tag that Tomoka had not-so-subtly left sticking onto the underside of the casing. A cheap present. Just like Tomoka.

But it still showed that her best friend still loves her.

A smile graced her lips.

"Thank you, Tomo-chan."

Her cell phone rang, causing her to jerk a bit. It took a while for her to respond to the screaming of her phone before she finally answered it. She forgot to look at the name displayed onto the screen.

"Hello?"

"Ne, Sakuno nee-chan! When are you coming?"

Sakuno slapped her forehead with the heel of her palm as she realized she was fifteen minutes late. Again, she tried to glare at the colored pellets sitting on her dressing table, making a point to blame the pellets for making her too preoccupied to realize the time.

"Sorry, I'll be there. I'm picking you up at the nearby bus stand, okay?"

"Okay!"

As Sayuri hung up, Sakuno checked her appearance once again before the mirror and tried not to grimace.

Why did she just realize that she didn't really have a sense of fashion?

* * *

The sound of shopping bags rubbing against each other accommodated the 'ding' of the elevator as it stopped on a particular floor.

"It's kind of weird though, not having a yard. But I guess this house is okay."

Sakuno adjusted the strap of her briefcase and tried to balance her own shopping bags as she did so.

"How about your laundry? I heard guys like your brother don't really do their own laundry."

Sayuri led the reporter along the corridor to stop in front of a door, numbered 19-126. She pushed some numbers on the small keypad installed above the door knob and waited a few seconds for the door to unlock.

"We pay for our laundry."

"Even your underwear?" At this, Sakuno thought about her own new set of lingerie and suddenly remembered Sayuri's push up bra.

Sayuri nodded and entered the house as the door unlocked itself, with Sakuno still thinking about other people folding others' underwear. Not quite her thing to be exact.

Sakuno's thoughts suddenly came to a halt as she stepped into Echizen Ryoma's house. Or unit. Or whatever those rich bachelor guys live inside other than a mansion. She stood transfixed by the still-open door while her brown eyes scanned the interior. The most favourite part of the house might just be the ceiling-to-floor windows overlooking the city below. Her eyes roamed over the dark-colored carpets, and stopped at a figure lying down in the longest couch, a hand covering his closed eyes looking like a lazy cat.

The younger Echizen disappeared somewhere to drop her bags, making sure to drop Sakuno's by the coffee table in the living room, and came back to wake Ryoma up.

"Wake up, sleeping beauty."

Sakuno could hear him mumble something that most probably sounded like 'five minutes' before he let his hand that previously covered his eyes to dangle by the edge of his navy-colored couch.

"Hey, wake up, nee-chan is here already."

He lazily opened his eyes to look at his sister before reluctantly sitting up to look for the brown-haired woman. A lazy grin spread across his face as he saw Sakuno looking at him by the front door.

"Hey."

Blinking, she watched as Sayuri disappear once again to change her clothes. Her eyes were then focused on the tired-looking tennis player a few feet from her position.

"Oh. Hi."

The grin on his face neither widening nor faltering as he nodded towards the door. "You can close that door, you know."

Realizing she was standing in the middle of the doorframe, Sakuno blushed and turned around to close the door. She turned back around just as she heard the door lock itself and was left looking at Ryoma who was scratching his head. He did look a little bit like a lazy cat.

"Sorry if we disturbed your nap."

The grin was not there anymore as he shook his head in the slightest.

"It's okay, I was waiting for you guys anyway. How did it go?"

Sakuno walked towards him, a finger resting on her chin as she did so. "She was fine, we ate, and talked about… her mother…"

She could see the slightest change in his eyes as she said that, and wondered if he was planning to do anything to make his life back on track. She remembered Sayuri telling her about the boarding school applications stacked on top of his bedside table, and made Sakuno promise not to tell Ryoma that the girl knew about the schools.

To think about it again, Sakuno knew the girl didn't want to talk to Ryoma about moving somewhere far away from her current home.

She decided to change the topic.

"She's quite weird though…"

Ryoma quirked a brow. "When hasn't she been weird?"

Sakuno laughed at that. "Well, she bought a… uhm…" She laughed nervously, "…a push-up… bra."

A push-up bra? Why did a sixteen-year old need that for?

"And let me guess, a pound of rock candy too."

The reporter nodded, and set her briefcase by her feet when she sat next to Ryoma.

"You ready? I've got all my questions with me."

Ryoma nodded half-heartedly as he searched for something. His eyes still looked sleepy as he decided to abandon whatever he was looking for and settled on looking at the woman next to him instead. He stifled a yawn as he looked at her single braid and the frameless glasses she had on her nose bridge. He noticed she'd changed those horrid glasses for something better. At least that was what he thought.

"Nee-chan!"

Sayuri called out as she reappeared at the living room, all clean and fresh. Her amber eyes scanned the reporter's appearance and frowned. The blue cardigan worn over the white and red T-shirt looked quite good on Sakuno, but the reporter had those clothes on since morning and she thought that the older woman needed a shower to freshen up.

"Are you comfortable still wearing those clothes? I think you need to wash up, you know.. freshen up your limbs and muscles... We did buy some new clothes, right?"

Sakuno realized that she did need a shower, a hot shower to soothe her exhausted muscles. They were constantly moving around at the mall and it was taking a toll on her small figure.

"Um, yes, you're right. I think I need to change… and wash up a bit…"

Ryoma nodded towards the guest room, the room left vacant between his and Sayuri's room.

"You can use the guest room."

He motioned Sakuno to follow him when Sayuri was busy reading the calorie content of one of the food stuff in the kitchen cupboard, distracted at her brother's calorie intake. They stopped at the second door, and she followed him inside, with her shopping bags in her hands.

She tried not to gape at the room, but she couldn't stop herself from blinking at the spacious spare room. The door to the small toilet was at the end of the room, and Sakuno wasted no time picking out a new set of lingerie from a plastic bag when she paused. Lifting her face to look up, a brow was raised as she watched Ryoma rest a shoulder against the door frame.

"Excuse me, Ryoma-kun?"

"What?" He asked, putting on a clueless face.

Sakuno blushed faintly as she cleared her throat, while a thumb pointed towards the bathroom door.

"I'm going to change, Ryoma-kun. Do you have anything to say to me that makes you stay here? Or are you just simply staying here to take a look at me?"

That got Ryoma to smirk. He straightened his posture and crossed his arms across his lean chest. But he didn't move away from the door.

"Maybe. But I thought I told you there was nothing to look at, didn't I?"

Sakuno sighed, not wanting to start something else. She was too tired to do anything anyway. She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture as she walked towards him.

"Please, Ryoma-kun? If you really have something to ask, can you just say it out or wait after I change?"

Shrugging, the tennis player let his eyes drop somewhere else, anywhere but her brown eyes. He settled on the dark blue plastic bag that according to Sayuri, had lingerie.

"How did you drive around town?"

Sakuno tiredly gave him a toothy grin. "I got my car back. Apparently, Inui-san helped a bit. He made some calls."

She giggled and made him smile a teeny tiny bit at her gleefulness. He turned around and walked away before reminding her they were to do the interview after dinner.

When Sakuno locked the door after him, she suddenly realized that she had yet to eat dinner. Shrugging it off, she made her way to the bathroom with a fresh set of lingerie, a new grey pullover hoodie with a Care Bear print on it, and a fluffy towel that was provided at the head post of the bed.

* * *

Sayuri looked up from the can of preserved bamboo shoots as Ryoma walked into the kitchen.

"Nee-chan is in the bathroom?"

Taking out a Ponta from the fridge, he nodded. Sayuri frowned as her brother chugged down the drink.

"You probably should cut down on that Ponta, nii-chan."

Ryoma raised a dark brow. "And why should I?"

The younger Echizen had her hands on her hips, a gesture indicating that she was going to lecture him over something petty.

"It has tonnes of sugar in it, and sugar can lead to high calorie intake and can make your body chubby! I don't wanna be seen walking around with a chubby brother."

He shrugged as he read the contents of the can he was holding. "I know. But I won't get fat, Sayuri."

Sayuri shook her head as she was busy pulling out fresh vegetables and other stuff to be put on the kitchen table.

"Yes, you will."

Ryoma tossed the empty can into the bin and walked over to his sister to pick up a Chinese cabbage.

"I have a high metabolic rate. I can burn off fat as fast as I consume it."

The frown on Sayuri's head disappeared as she laughed at Ryama's clever reasoning. "Oookay. Hey, put that cabbage down."

"What are you doing anyway?"

Sayuri proudly looked at the fresh foodstuff she had picked out from the super market, with Sakuno's help, of course. She pounded a small fist against her chest.

"I'm gonna make dinner!"

Ryoma tried not to laugh, but he couldn't help the grin forming on his face. "You? Cook? You're gonna burn this house."

Pouting, Sayuri put on an apron and fetched a chopping board and knives. "I can."

Leaning against the counter with the grin still on his face, Ryoma watched as Sayuri scratched her head.

"What are you cooking?"

As expected, his sister raised a brow at most of the stuff she picked up and crossed her arms across her chest. She frowned as she looked at the vegetables, and lifted her head to look at Ryoma.

"Um… I don't know."

Ryoma gave her a look which clearly said: 'Told ya so' before he made a move to the living room to call for take-out dinner. Sayuri tapped his shoulder before he made his move, making him turn around.

"Nii-chan, I don't want to eat take-outs anymore. I'm bored of the food."

Scowling, Ryoma nodded towards the food stuff brought out on the table. "I can't wait for you to figure out how to cook."

Sayuri smiled sweetly. "Um, actually, nee-chan can cook…"

He didn't like where this was going. Sakuno was there to interview him, not cook dinner for them. That was asking too much, although the idea did appeal to him. But no, Sakuno was a guest. And he didn't make guests cook for him. Because Sakuno was, sadly, the first guest to ever enter his current home.

"So? You can't ask others to cook for you when they're guests."

Sayuri pouted. "Since when have you become so nice?"

Ryoma could feel a brow twitch. "And why are you becoming a brat today?"

His sister gasped dramatically. "Nii-chan!"

Annoyed, Ryoma reached inside his pocket for his cell phone to dial instead. "What?"

Sayuri managed to somehow produce tears at the corners of her eyes. "I just wanted some home-cooked Japanese food… Is that too much?"

To add to the dramatic effect, Sayuri let a tear roll down her eye, and her lips were wobbling.

He couldn't believe it.

Why was his sister being such a drama queen lately? Her mood swings were getting worse, despite the fact that they were slowly getting along with each other.

He crossed his arms again, and proceeded to dial the number for take-out. "No."

Sayuri pouted again, her fake tears instantly disappearing as she huffed when she turned her back to him. To emphasize her sulking, she crossed her arms.

Ryoma sighed inaudibly as he watched his sister's back to him. He held the phone to an ear when he heard Sayuri mumble.

"I wish I had a nee-chan."

He was about to snap the phone in half out of frustration when they heard Sakuno by the kitchen door.

"Um, I can cook for you if you want…"

Instantly, Sayuri turned around to flash him a goofy grin.

Hanging up from his previous call, Ryoma looked at his sister dejectedly. "Sayuri…"

Sakuno laughed as she heard Sayuri told her everything about not knowing how to cook and Ryoma not letting the guest cook. She donned the apron Sayuri had previously put on as she rolled up the sleeves of her new pullover hoodie.

"It's okay, Ryoma-kun. You agreed to do an interview, and this is the least I can do. If we have soba here, I might finish dinner in half an hour."

Sayuri eagerly stuck her hand into another plastic bag and handed Sakuno a packet of dried soba noodles.

"Here, nee-chan!"

Ryoma sighed as he leaned against the counter, watching Sakuno chop up some vegetables to make a simple soup.

He realized he was sighing a lot more often ever since Sayuri entered his life.

He grabbed a glass of water as he stayed by the side lines, watching as Sakuno chatted happily with Sayuri who was rather being quite bothersome by popping here and there, trying to learn how to cook. The water was boiling, and Sakuno had let the soba noodles cook for a while before she drained the noodles. He watched as she expertly sliced some mushrooms to be put into the soup, and wondered why the reporter was good in a lot of things. The woman knew how to write journals, she knew how to communicate with Vlad's and Bobby's slurry Japanese, she knew how to make him feel good about himself.

Ryuzaki Sakuno to him, was amazing.

His eyes spotted the bandage covering her right hand. She must have had a bruise for punching that Okinawan guy.

"Nee-chan, I'll make the tea. Um… put five cups of water…"

Ryoma heard Sayuri mumble to herself as his sister carefully poured some water into a kettle to be boiled. Childhood memories flashed for a moment, making him smile just a little bit as he walked to his sister to ruffle her hair.

"You said 'gotter' when you were two."

Sayuri pouted as she smoothed her messed hair. "I was a kid. How did you know anyway?"

He stood behind Sakuno as he peered over her shoulder to look at the boiling soup.

"I visited, but I doubt you remember."

Nodding, Sayuri turned to the fridge to store some stuff. "I was cute when I was a kid."

A chuckle escaped him. "You were bald."

He ignored the soothing feeling in his chest as he heard Sakuno's laughter. Sayuri, on the other hand, scowled.

"I was still cute."

Ryoma nodded nonchalantly as he continued to peer over Sakuno's shoulder.

"What's that?"

Sakuno nearly jerked as she felt his breath tickling her earlobe, wondering since when he was behind her looking over her shoulder so dangerously near to her.

It was times like these when everything she heard from Tomoka flashed in her head.

_Lean into him._

She blushed faintly at the thought. Clearing her throat, she continued to stir the soup gently, careful as to not let the vegetables break into small pieces.

"It's vegetable soup. I've put some slices of beef in here too."

Ryoma nodded distractedly, and glanced towards Sayuri as the young girl hurried to her bedroom to answer her ringing phone.

"Thanks."

Sakuno blinked, and turned her face to look up at him. Their faces were so close to each other, that it made her brain shut down for a while. Ryoma's hair was a bit tousled, as if he'd just been out of bed when she and Sayuri had come back from their shopping, when he had only been napping for a while. And he looked delicious, she couldn't help it when her eyes dropped to his lips. Without looking up from his mouth, she managed to whisper out an answer.

"You're welcome."

Seeing her eyes dropping to his mouth tempted him to just kiss her silly right then and there. She had suddenly licked her lips, causing the bottom lip to glisten a bit at the action, rendering his mouth dry. He knew then and there if she was ever to seduce him, he would be a lost man. He was already a lost man when he dipped his head to kiss her, her warm breath tickling his lips as he came very close to kiss her.

The soup was left forgotten for a while as they lips touched, but not for long when suddenly Sayuri came back, her eyes focusing on her phone screen. Instantly, they both pulled back, and Ryoma quickly stepped back, quite disappointed at the loss of Sakuno's body heat from just a few moments ago. He sucked in a breath as his sister mumbled something about some dude calling the wrong number. Ryoma didn't notice that Sayuri was saying something to him as he looked at Sakuno's back; and knowing the reporter, he knew she was blushing uncontrollably.

"Nii-chan? Are you listening?"

Ryoma snapped out of his trance as he turned to his sister, his eyes looking unfocused for a while.

"Yeah?"

Sayuri frowned as she observed her suddenly fazed brother. "Are you okay? You look exhausted."

He blinked for a while and cleared his throat. "I'm okay…. No, I think I need a shower."

And with that, he quickly left the kitchen to lock himself in his bathroom for a cold, cold shower.

* * *

Dinner was simple, but it was the fact that it was home made that made dinner so delicious and nostalgic to Ryoma. He remembered why he preferred Japanese cooking, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to know that Sayuri shared the same preference when it came to food.

Sakuno listened as she heard the two siblings talk about Sayuri's school, their dad and other family-related stuff, where Sayuri had obviously been the main person to talk and Ryoma being the ever-so-loyal listener he was. Her brown eyes dropped momentarily at the glass of milk Ryoma had poured for her. Believe it or not, Echizen Ryoma was a milk drinker. How adorable.

"Ryuzaki, you're not drinking the milk." She heard him say, making her look up at him.

"Why are you telling me to drink it, anyway? I thought I said no thank you."

Sayuri slurped on her soba. "If you wanna know nee-chan, my brother is a man who eats healthy stuff."

Ryoma nodded as he drank some of the milk from his glass. Sakuno remembered not seeing Ryoma drink coffee, and she remembered the tennis player declining her offer for coffee when he'd talked to her the day after she was sacked momentarily.

"I do know for a fact that your brother doesn't drink coffee."

The man in the centre of the conversation finished the last drop of his milk. "I'm a temple of healthy food."

Suddenly Sakuno's mouth decided to butt in, and said probably the dirtiest thing in their conversation so far.

"And women with big chests and long legs are welcomed to worship."

Sayuri laughed, even coughing a bit as she choked on a piece of cabbage. And Ryoma was smirking at her, his amber eyes glinting with something unreadable. Sakuno blushed and covered her mouth afterwards.

"I-I'm s-sorry. That came out wrong."

As if it was everyday routine, Ryoma shrugged it off and saw that his sister hadn't touched her glass of milk.

"Sayuri, your milk."

Sayuri pointed towards Sakuno's untouched glass of milk. "But nee-chan doesn't have to!"

Sakuno nodded affirmatively.

Ryoma looked at his sister for a heartbeat, before he shrugged a shoulder. "I don't know about you, but I think if Aunt Fujiko's here, she would tell you to drink the milk before you become like her."

Apparently, Aunt Fujiko must be an osteoporosis nightmare to be able to make Sayuri shut her mouth and chug down her glass of milk. She licked off the white moustache and suddenly burped, making Sakuno widen her eyes and Ryoma to sigh yet again.

"Seriously Sayuri, you're unbelievable."

The younger Echizen giggled instead and suddenly made a random statement. "I wanna drive your car."

Ryoma stood up to bring his own dishes to the kitchen, followed by Sayuri tailing after him, dishes in her hands as she pestered her brother about his Land Cruiser. Sakuno smiled serenely as she watched them from the sink while she washed her dishes. Whatever that made Ryoma to think that he wasn't enough of a good brother, he was definitely wrong. Brothers don't have to be talkative or jovial to be a good brother. Even when Ryoma seemed to ignore his sister completely whenever the young girl talked about him letting her drive his car, or when she would be pestering him to give her one of his visa cards, it was crystal clear to Sakuno that they were really on good terms, if she put out the boarding school issue. Maybe others couldn't even tell that they were born from different mothers. Despite all, seeing Ryoma's tint of a smile on the corner of his lips as he conversed with his younger sibling seemed to just make her heart pinch just a little bit more.

She didn't know when the conversation turned from his car to Sayuri telling him about sleeping over at her friend's house, a couple of floors below their unit.

Wait, a sleep over? She didn't know about this.

That meant she would be alone in Echizen Ryoma's unit, alone staring at the owner of the house himself. In five minutes. In five, cursed minutes when she would watch helplessly as Sayuri walked out of the front door, a back pack readied in her hands.

"Wait, Ryoma-kun… Are we… still doing the interview?"

He missed the blush on her cheeks as he nodded, oblivious to the fact that he was doing an interview with a reporter who he knew nothing about her feelings for him. Or maybe he knew and he was doing this just to spite her?

"C'mon. It's more comfortable in the living room."

Obediently, Sakuno followed her interviewee to his living room, and joined him as he sat on the previous couch he'd napped on. He watched patiently as she reached for her briefcase and pulled out a recorder. A corner of his mouth tilted upwards slightly as she took off her glasses, set them on the coffee table and tied her brown hair into a messy bun. She looked cute when she chanted something under her breath –probably some encouragement, seeing as she clasped her hands in a praying manner – and turned to him with a notepad with questions scribbled on them in her right hand and her recorder in the other. She actually looked nervous, and it felt quite odd to him that an interview would cause the nervousness. There were little stuff that unnerved her, from what he noticed during her travels with the team.

She took a big breath, and Ryoma had to keep his eyes glued to hers to avoid looking at her moving chest.

"To lead the Dragons to countless victories just a few weeks after you were appointed Captain, I'm sure there are some secrets behind that, don't you think?"

Ryoma was speechless for a moment, and looked at her as if she was Sayuri speaking French. And Sayuri was bad at French. All of a sudden, Sakuno was all-work and no play. He kind of respected that.

"I wouldn't call it a secret though. Sure, we won a lot during those times, and I'm sure to say that Inui's training drill was one of the reasons we pulled through."

Sakuno held in a giggle. "I see you're one to not take all the compliments to yourself."

He nodded. "It's just that this game requires a lot of teamwork. We usually back up each other when someone has a hard time in the courts. Maybe that helps a lot too."

Nodding, Sakuno read another question from her notepad. "Those kinds of back-up are what makes your team a good one, am I right?"

Ryoma shrugged. "Well other teams have those kinds of back-ups too, but I do think considering the guys in the team are quite… interesting, so yeah. We've got Kikumaru and Momo, Sengoku's quite on the eccentric side too sometimes. Mostly he's just a perv."

He got Sakuno's laughter out of his last statement and thought that this interview thing wasn't such a bad idea after all. Not when he's with her.

The reporter shook her head and seemed to relax a bit when she pulled up a leg onto the couch, and settled more comfortably next to him.

"That was a good response." She glanced at her notepad again. "What about retirement? Ever thought of it?"

He never really considered retirement ever since he was back on track after the worst part of his life when he was in rehab. As he thought about winning the World Tennis Cup, he never expected retirement so early.

"No, not really."

"When would it be then? If you were to retire, I mean."

He thought for a while. "Inui likes to predict stuff, and he said I would retire in five years."

He saw Sakuno smile as her eyes dropped to her lap, obviously about to say something. "And knowing you, you wouldn't do that."

Ryoma raised a brow and a corner of his mouth kicked up a bit. "Of course. Maybe a little more years after that, but not in five years. It's too soon."

Sakuno nodded as she read something in the notepad. "People have been wondering, if you're interested in coaching after you retire. What about that?"

"I've been thinking about that, yeah. It's the least I can do to help others, I guess."

"I know this is quite random, but do you have some pre-game rituals?"

Her interviewee looked up from his fingers to her face, a half grin on his face. "Besides you calling me a big dumb pumpkin?"

Sakuno blushed and cleared her throat. "I'm not writing that."

Ryoma scoffed. "Hypocrite."

"I have to be sometimes, to avoid any mishaps during my interviews."

He waved his hand dismissively. "Whatever. I eat energy-boosting stuff, like meat and lots of Ponta."

He heard Sakuno laugh at that. "Ponta? Yes, the guys have been telling me that. Interesting."

"Sayuri had told me to cut down on Ponta though. She's sometimes controlling what I eat, as if she's not damaging herself already with the rock candies."

Briefly, Sakuno thought she saw something flash in his eyes. Fondness, maybe? It seemed to her that he was doing well for a person who hates interviews.

"Do you want to talk about your sister?"

As she thought, Ryoma shook his head. She instantly turned off the recorder in her hand.

"I don't want her swarmed by the press. She frets about stuff easily, especially when it concerns me and oyaji."

Sakuno nodded. "I understand. I'm not recording anymore."

Ryoma let his eyes drop onto the coffee table, looking at the surface intently as he thought of things. "No, you don't."

A smile stretched across Sakuno's face as she shook her head. "I do, believe me. I might not have a brother, or any other siblings, but I worry over my daddy if he doesn't pick up the phone. We don't have mommy to look out after him anymore, so I do know what it feels like to fret over a family member. Especially because we only have each other to hold on to."

Guilt washed over him as he looked at her with that sad look on her face. He hated it. His eyes dropped to her bandaged knuckles.

"Does that hurt?" He asked, as he pried her recorder and notepad off her fingers and set them onto the coffee table.

She watched as he brought her bandaged hand into his, stroking lightly on her right knuckles. She distractedly answered his question with a 'Sort of', and almost missed the next words coming from him.

"Sorry. I didn't know about your mom."

Smiling shyly, Sakuno shook her head. "It's okay."

She watched him as he nodded slightly, and when he slowly trailed his fingers along her exposed forearm, past the ruffle of her rolled-up sleeves, and rested against the crook of her neck, her skin tingled in the most pleasant way. Amber eyes bore into hers as he lowered his face to kiss her, freezing her in place. The sound of the screaming police siren from nine stories below slowly faded as their lips touched, gently at first, and when she kissed back shyly, he pressed harder.

His other hand nestled against the curve of her waist and pulled her closer, and they broke apart to suck in air as she ran her hands up his flat abdomen towards his lean chest, making her warmth seep through his white long-sleeved shirt and making the skin under her hands turn very warm.

She blushed as she heard him mumble against her lips for her to come closer before kissing her again. Her leg accidentally hit the leg of the coffee table as she shifted closer to him, drawing up her left leg to rest against his right knee. As he untied her messy bun, Sakuno knew doing this would lead to troublesome situations, and she really didn't mean it when she shifted closer and closer towards him as he expertly explored every crevice in her mouth, daring her to entice him too.

Ryoma had hooked his hands at the back of her knees, and brought her legs closer to him so that she straddled him. Instantly Sakuno broke the kiss as he rested his hands on her hips to make her sit on his lap. She heard him growl as she flattened her palms against his chest to put a foot of space between her chest and his.

"W-Wait… Ryoma-kun…"

She heard him mumbling something against her neck and leaned away to hear better. "Sorry, I didn't hear you."

He still had his nose buried in her loosened hair when he spoke, his voice clearly sounded annoyed at being stopped.

"I'm not gonna do what you think it is, not until you're ready. So come closer, damn it."

She gasped as he crushed her to him again and sent burning kisses along her neck, and a yelp came out of her lips as she felt his hands lifting up the hem of her hoodie to expose her bare sides. She hadn't felt it necessary to have worn something under the hoodie, and she started regretting it when she felt his kisses stop at her earlobe to look down.

"What?" he sounded sleepy, but there was a tinge of amusement in his voice as he got to see the thing that Sakuno tried to hide by pulling down her clothing.

"U-Um…" She tried to cover her exposed skin by tugging the hem down, but Ryoma managed to lift the sides back up to see a little more of her skin.

There, just above the right side of the hem of her beige caprice, was a tattoo peeking out. He ran a thumb over the inked small roses and vines twisting into an elegant drawing on her creamy skin. _Sexy. Very._Damn, he couldn't even form a complete sentence. He was a really lost man.

"Don't look at it for too long… it's embarrassing…" She whispered above his head, even as she leaned towards his touch.

Without looking up from the tattoo, he distractedly spoke up, his voice turning husky. "Why are you embarrassed about this?"

Blushing a few shades darker, Sakuno bit her lower lip. She had her hands on his shoulders to tighten a bit.

"I… I'm not one to inspire lust… in men… especially men like you… I _did_have a boyfriend a few years back though." She whispered the last part, now almost surrendering to his touches.

Again without looking up, Ryoma wondered what she would do if he kissed her tattoo. Knowing Sakuno, it must have hurt when she got it.

"You're kidding me. Whoever your ex was, he really didn't know what he was missing."

The woman straddling his thighs laughed shyly, and then complied as he lifted her up from his lap to kiss her tattoo. He looked at her face as he sat her back onto his lap, watching her as she smiled at him, the blush on her cheeks making her look so damn beautiful.

"Stay tonight." He said as his eyes dropped to her lips again.

Without answering, Sakuno wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him fully on the lips. She could feel his smirk growing against her lips as she slid closer to him, making sure her body was pushed fully against his.

That was definitely a 'yes'.

* * *

_**Sakuno's house, a little over midnight.**_

The black beads that made up the eyes for the tiger plushie perched on top her bed reflected the lights and the movement of the man inside the house.

The sound of him chuckling as he found what he wanted reverberated throughout the empty room. The small beads on Tiger's head glinted a while as the lights were shut off, and saw the man moving fluidly towards the door to let himself out of the apartment.

If only the plushie was a living thing, it might have been the only witness to see Ryuzaki Sakuno's house intruded.

* * *

**A/N: That. Was. Exhausting. And steamy. I'm sorry to those who are pure-hearted, I'm not a perv or anything, I haven't even had my first kiss yet. It's just that I read a lot of stories and books and VOILA! This is what you get. I warned you, didn't I?**

**I'm not aiming for 100 reviews or something like that, but it'll be much appreciated if you send reviews, yeah?**

**Till I update again! Buh bye!**


	14. Ch13: The Pain of Betrayal

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: HELLOHELLOHELLO Y'ALL! So here I am again, with a new chapter. I think this is gonna be the second last chapter. Well, I don't really have much to say except that I'm so SORRY for the ultimately late update. I'm down with a bad flu *ACHHOO!* , some bug infiltrated my outer defenses and somehow managed to lodge itself in my tummy and now it's happily tap dancing on my fundus. Enough with the babbling, let's get to the best part yeah?**

**WARNING: Again, there will be a scene bordering M, at the beginning of this chapter. Don't read it if you're not up to it, but if you do, you're perverts! Hehehehe... It's okay, sometimes I'm a pervert myself.**

* * *

**Ch13: The Pain of Betrayal**

The first thing she saw when she woke up was white. The first thing she smelt as she opened her eyes was a familiar aftershave. She heard his steady breathing as he was still asleep, an arm draped around her waist to keep her close, and the other was left dangling over the edge of the bed. The thin frame which had the picture of his mother was put onto the bedside table last night before she had fallen asleep.

A serene smile stretched her face as she snuggled deeper into his chest, feeling his arm securely around her. Sakuno felt lucky, having someone as great as Ryoma to wake up next to in the morning. Nothing more happened the night before, but she couldn't remember when he had brought her to his bedroom. First they had been kissing as if something was going to happen, and the next thing she knew he was holding her in his arms while she told him of her childhood stories, occasionally telling some of his.

She looked up from his chest and ran a hand through his dark hair. From the talk with him, she learned that under his tough façade and the nonchalant attitude, he was pretty much the little boy that the wonderful woman in the thin frame had given birth to. She had never met his mother, but from what Nanjiroh and Ryoma described her, Sakuno knew she would've wanted to meet Echizen Rinko.

Her hand trailed down to his cheek, and rested there. His eyes slowly opened, showing his beautiful pair of eyes. He looked down to see her face, and pulled her up so that she could look at him levelly. Sakuno blushed when he greeted her with a sleepy grin.

"Morning."

While the blush still stained her cheeks, Sakuno answered back meekly. "M-Morning, Ryoma-kun."

He brought his dangling hand to move some strands of her hair out of her forehead. He didn't smile, he didn't smirk, his face was unreadable as Sakuno looked up. His eyes wandered away from hers for a heartbeat before he looked back into her brown orbs.

"When are you leaving?" He asked, making Sakuno's smile falter a bit.

Somehow she felt something tugging at her heart as he said those words. She felt as if he was dismissing her, which contradicted his wishes for her to stay last night. Sakuno lowered her head so he couldn't see her eyes. It was a few seconds when suddenly she let out a shaky laugh and pushed herself away from him, clumsily sliding off the bed while her hands were busily smoothing her slightly tousled hair.

"I-I'm sorry, yeah, I'll be leaving… I just… I just need to find my-"

Ryoma rose his brows and quickly sensing the situation, he instantly embraced her from behind. Sakuno heard him curse himself under his breath before he amended his mistake.

"That's not what I meant."

Her breath hitched as he said those words, very close to her ear. She couldn't help but ask, her voice soft. "Really?"

A darker shade of pink colored Sakuno's cheeks as she felt his half grin against the skin on the side of her neck.

"I need to know when to drop you off after spending some time here. Sayuri's gone to school from her friend's house so…"

He let his words hang as he felt her turn around in his arms. Feeling suddenly stupid, Sakuno smiled shyly at him, laughing a bit.

"I'm sorry… Um… Pancakes?"

Ryoma nearly chuckled at her immediate response. He could live every day like this, waking up to Sakuno's smile and her unpredictable idea of a breakfast. He settled on a brief kiss to her lips.

"Okay. But shower first."

Without a warning, he lifted her up bridal-style and marched towards his bathroom, carrying a blushing Sakuno in his arms, sputtering nonsense even as he set her on her feet. She was instantly silenced when he kissed her and switched on the shower.

Now, she would also prefer a shower first thing in the morning; but having a beautiful man with her, under the showers, the situation just screamed bloody crazy for her. Especially when his lips felt so good, made even more pleasurable with the water trickling down their bodies, soaking them to the bone. It was when some droplets of water trailed down her nose, making their way downward between their lips, did the kiss felt like Heaven on Earth.

She now knew why couples preferred kissing in the rain.

It was crazy, even as he lifted the sides of her drenched hoodie to brush his thumbs against her creamy tattooed skin, but she couldn't help but delve in the craziness that felt utterly right.

Her eyes were still glassy as they broke the kiss, his lips tugging up to a smirk. She smiled as he rested his forehead against hers, his hair matted against the sides of his neck. A slow grin started to grow on his lips as he lifted the sides of her wet attire higher, and brushed his thumbs against the underside of the dark blue lace holding her bosom. Her breath hitched and instantly she grasped his wrist, stopping his tempting ministrations.

How long was it, she pondered. How long was it when the last time she had let a man touch her like that.

"Ten years…" she unconsciously whispered against his lips.

Ryoma looked into her glazed eyes. "What?"

Sakuno sighed and tried to put distance between her body and the man in front of her.

"The last time I let a man touch me like you did just now was ten years ago. And I was drunk when that happened."

Instantly, Ryoma felt something snap in him. If he had known her back then, he was sure to give that guy a beating for touching a woman without her consent. A few days back he had done exactly that, when Sayuri came home crying. Touch his sister in the wrong way, and he was sure to make any guy live a living hell.

Sensing Ryoma's eyes unfocused, Sakuno brushed his cheek. His hands were lowered to rest against the curve of her waist.

"I'm sorry, Ryoma-kun… It's just that…"

Ryoma closed his eyes and leaned further into her touch. Why in the world hadn't he gotten to her before? He had been living a fucked up life, and it took him thirty friggin years just to find her. She was too kind to him.

"I'm sorry… for… touching you like that."

Her gasp made him open his eyes. "N-No! It's o-okay if you touched me like that… um… I mean, I really liked it because it was you who's doing it and… I…"

His brow rose. "Because _I'm _doing it?"

Noticing her slip up, Sakuno laughed shyly. "I mean, I don't mind _you_touching me, it's just that… I don't know… It's been ten years… I'm nervous."

"Don't be, I'm not." Ryoma chuckled and kissed her with all his being, and pulled her so close to him. He wasted no time breaking the kiss just quick enough to pull away his wet white shirt from his body, then he suddenly stopped when he heard Sakuno gasp against his lips.

She gave him an apologetic smile, as if she remembered something very important.

Somehow he knew what was coming and instantly he growled curses to whatever deity up there making fun of his life. He so badly wanted this, goddamnit. He had been deprived for more than what a healthy man with a healthy libido could possibly withstand. Just when he was close to it, with the perfect woman he had ever wanted, for the first friggin time, THIS had to happen.

"Damn." He mumbled against her neck as she told him about her _Single Soul_article which had yet to be submitted that morning.

He sighed as he brushed a thumb against her cheek, stepping back to look at her lovely face.

"I guess this means we're showering separately, right?"

Sakuno blushed at the evident disappointment in his voice. She punched his chest playfully, eliciting a chuckle from him. She couldn't help but giggle.

"Pervert."

* * *

Sakuno's eyes caught sight of his head as she boarded the private jet to Okinawa for the Dragons' next match. He was listening to something Momo had to say when he lifted his head to see her clumsily stuffing her briefcase under her seat next to Horio. His brow rose as he noticed her wearing a casual pink Hello Kitty T-Shirt under her Dragon's jersey. The jersey and shirt rode up slightly as she bent down to stuff the briefcase, showing the back pockets of her denims resting on the curve of her behind. He remembered how her back fit snuggly against his from yesterday's morning, and ever since, he was constantly trying to keep his mind out of the gutter, especially now when he thought about how her shirt needed to ride up her back a little bit more to reveal her white skin.

"Do you know that you're making it obvious?"

Ryoma snapped out of his observation when Momo's words struck him. He turned his eyes towards his best friend, feigning ignorance.

"What's obvious?"

Momo had that knowing grin on his face again. "I don't know. About you ogling her and not keeping yer head outta the gutter?"

If Momo had been more intent, he could've notice Ryoma's breath hitch. It seemed like a heartbeat when the Captain countered with a 'so-what?' shrug.

"I'm not like my dad."

The Doubles Player guffawed and shrugged the matter off.

"Whatever. Anyway, you know who we're going against after today's match, right?"

Nodding, Ryoma answered a message from Sayuri using his cell phone. "Inui said that we're probably going against the Rikkaidai brats."

Momo frowned. "Well, I think so, but you do know who they're going against today, right? They'll be fighting against the Kanto Gods, ya know, the one with that stuck up Captain.."

Ryoma had the corners of his mouth tug downwards, a sign that he was not pleased. "That Monkey King. I know him, of course."

Atobe Keigo, who couldn't forget him. With the way he talks about himself using his infamous 'ore-sama' this and 'ore-sama' that, it was hard to ignore the man whom Ryoma preferred calling Monkey King. It was no secret that Echizen Ryoma and Atobe Keigo were strong rivals. Both wanted the Tennis Cup, and both wanted to beat each other through a match of skills and strength. What the press didn't know was that the so-called Monkey King was the one who also caused the knee pains bothering Ryoma.

_Monkey bastard._He grudgingly growled in his head.

Sensing the tensing in his friend's posture, Momo punched the Captain lightly on a shoulder.

"What happened was a long time ago. What about this; win tonight's game, and train with me tomorrow. And then beat his sorry ass next Friday in our home game. How does that sound?"

Seeing the smirk from the team Captain, Momo figured it was already a deal.

* * *

Time went by so fast after the team got back from Okinawa. Home games were won over by them easily, and a few charity work were completed, leading to a chilly Friday. The guys were hanging around in a bar somewhere near Sakuno's apartment when they asked her to join for some drinks. What they didn't tell her was that her article was featured in _Tokyo's _as the most favored article of the month. She barely contained herself from squealing in delight as the subject of her article gave a copy to her with his all-knowing smirk.

"You could've described me better, you know. I'm not _that_aloof."

Sakuno smiled up shyly at him before taking a seat next to Eiji. Her eyes shone excitedly as she traced the words written on the glossy page of her article, a full, five page article of hers; describing the team's numerous victory and of course, Echizen Ryoma. A picture of him in battle mode was placed at the top-right corner of the first page of her article and it made her heart swell with pride. Unknowingly, a few tears escaped her eyes.

The guys panicked.

"Nyaa, Sakuno-chin? You okay? Is the picture too scary?"

She laughed at that, and waved off their fussing. It wasn't that she didn't like it. She loved it. The _Tokyo's _for once, did exactly what she wanted. They respected her, at last. They finally acknowledged her, Ryuzaki Sakuno. A bright smile was directed towards Ryoma, sitting across from her.

"Thank you, Ryoma-kun."

Again, he was transfixed by her sincerity. He had to suppress from groaning out as his senses went blank for a while with that smile. The guys would never hear the end of it if they were to know he, the Captain, was pretty much bewitched by a mere smile.

"You're welcome."

The guys didn't seem to notice the exchange between those two, and somebody, most probably Sengoku, ordered more drinks to celebrate their little Good Luck Charm, their Tiger.

* * *

Shiba Saori looked up from the papers she was given by the man whom waited patiently across from her desk. Her full lips, smeared with a deep red lipstick tugged up to a smile.

"Wow, this is… a masterpiece…"

John Doe whom had walked into her office thirty minutes prior confidently, returned her smile with one of his own.

"What can I say, it's written by the best female reporter in _Tokyo's_. How are the pictures?"

Shiba nodded appreciatively at the stack of glossy pictures next to her cup of coffee.

"Excellent shots. Where is she, by the way? This amazing woman… what was her name again?"

The smile on the man's face widened to a creepy grin.

"Ryuzaki. Ryuzaki Sakuno."

* * *

She was tired. Flat. Beaten. She felt ten times worse compared to that time when she shopped for shoes with Tomoka. The team had a fair share of victories, that was for sure, but they had been practically flying all over the world for the eight matches the team battled through. They had lost in some matches, mostly because half of the team had severe food poisoning on the way to their second match of their Eight-Game drill. But they managed to pull it through in the end, coming back to Japan with 5 wins and three losses.

And for some reason, she had been quite famous for the last five days. It was mainly because her face was featured in an article of one of the famous sports magazines, something about her standing up to an unprofessional tennis player. While the guys had been protecting her from all the 'evil men with privacy-molesting cameras', Nanjiroh had been throwing these men at her, much to Ryoma's annoyance.

"He's just being happy for me, Ryoma-kun." She had once said that after he dragged her away from the flashes into the team's locker room after a long and frustrating match.

"And he's doing that purposely to irk me. Stupid old man."

She had laughed at his response, and walked away from him to interview his team mates, all the while tempting him to just kiss her there in front of the others. But that would bring more 'evil men with privacy-molesting cameras' into her face.

She smiled tiredly as she stepped into her apartment, the moonlight seeped through the curtain gaps to bathe her hallway in its early night moonlight. Peeling off her clothes, she jumped into the shower for a relaxing bath while thinking about the promotion from Mr. Schneider. Apparently, he was astounded that she had stood up to a man twice her size, and the board of directors decided to promote her. Ryoma had been teasing her about that new house she would move into by the end of the month to work with the advertisement company assigned to work under Mr. Schneider himself. A few minutes under the cool shower, a flash of ripped abs home to a devious black horseshoe tattoo invaded her mind, causing her to blush madly. A shy smile stretched her lips as she thought about a particular man.

The shrill of her phone startled her from her daydream. Clumsily wrapping herself with a white bathrobe, she nearly stumbled while reaching for the phone.

"Sakuno!"

Tomoka's loud voice greeted her as soon as she picked up the receiver. A nervous laugh escaped her lips as she sat on her heels on the floor.

"Uh… Hi, Tomo-chan."

"What in the world were you doing? I've been calling you for the last five minutes!"

Frustration rang in her friend's voice, and Sakuno had to spend the next ten seconds apologizing.

"Okay, okay, apology accepted. Anyway, are you okay?"

"What do you mean, Tomo-chan? Of course I'm okay!"

A few seconds of silence from the other side of the receiver had Sakuno anticipate something horrible coming from Tomoka's mouth.

"Sakuno, dear, I want you here at my place, this instant. Got that?"

Without waiting for a confused Sakuno's reply, the call ended.

Half the way to Tomoka's place, Sakuno had wondered if the red head got into trouble again with the wrong man. But she knew Tomoka was dating someone and that man was far from being a trouble. Well, that was what Tomoka had said about her last two lovers. And the one before them, and the other before the others.

And like always, Ryuzaki Sakuno was utterly wrong when it came to guessing games.

The moment she stepped through Tomoka's door, with her shoes still on, her best friend had practically sucked her into a big bear hug while saying words of comfort.

"Sakuno, I love you, I do, but what have done now? I know, I know, you lost your mother and you want others to respect you for who you are but-"

Sakuno finally broke free of the hug and instantly shut Tomoka's ramblings with a hand to her mouth.

"Tomo-chan? Wh-What's wrong?"

Eyes wide, Tomoka threw her hands up. "You don't know?"

Laughing nervously, Sakuno shook her head. "Of course…"

Tomoka's eyes softened instantly as she looked at her best friend. Sakuno really didn't know. How typical of the auburn-haired girl she once knew as Miss Wobbly Hips from kindergarten. She turned around, not letting Sakuno see her wipe off her tears as she reached for the DIVA magazine she had been reading for the last hour. Flipping through some pages, she turned around to face a confused Sakuno and stopped at a particular page.

"This came out this morning, but you were still somewhere out of Japan and I don't have the money to call you."

Saying those words, she handed Sakuno the magazine.

Sakuno remembered asking her daddy once about heart attacks. She had been wondering the best way to die, and she had heard one of her friends talking about heart attacks. Her daddy had laughed when she asked her about the pain; if heart attacks were scary, if they were painful… She remembered her daddy saying something about feeling as if though you're drowning. It feels as if your chest was pressed heavily with something as big as the bell at the temple where he worked. She decided then that she didn't want to die a painful death like that, and kept her promise. She had never felt that sort of pain, never experienced it.

But at that moment, what she felt might probably be close to what her daddy meant twenty three years ago. Close, because if it had been the exact degree of pain, she wouldn't be alive that moment when Tomoka showed her the article. She wouldn't be letting the tears fall freely from her brown eyes, and she wouldn't have bolted out of Tomoka's door to find Ryoma.

He must be at his house.

She wanted to get there as fast as possible to explain. Everything.

* * *

The guys were lounging at the local bar nearest to the Arena when Horio walked in to join them. The guys greeted him half-heartedly as they munched on roasted ribs and chips, and the youngest manager went straight to Ryoma whom was sitting next to Momo, downing a glass of beer.

"Echizen," he called out.

Ryoma had put the glass down and answered the red head with a nod. He raised his brows as he noticed something wrong with Horio. He wasn't wearing his usual purple skull silk shirt, but that was the least of his concern. It was about the way Horio was fidgeting when the usually loud manager plopped onto the empty seat facing the Dragons' Captain. His eyes lowered towards the red, pink and white magazine Horio slid across the table for him to look at, and instantly his appetite dropped.

He held the magazine in his hands, with some of the guys hovering around him to look at the page Horio had left open.

There, in the center of one glossy page, were pictures of him and Sakuno talking to each other, and some of the pictures showed how he'd pat her head, and that time when he nearly kissed her in the locker room, his torso bare of any clothing. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the snapshots insinuated.

"Nyaa, Echizen? You and Sakuno-chin? I didn't know that you guys were an item."

Ryoma could feel Momo's gaze on him as he read the whole article on the next page, barely containing his hands from ripping the magazine into pieces.

"…_I have never thought that a guy like him would ever fall for the likes of me. But as others say, we can't choose who we fall for. In this case, I just needed to play innocent, and gradually, his interest towards me built up… and voila! It was just a matter of time when I finally saw how he was no different from any other men…"_

When his mother died, he had promised himself to never jump into situations requiring him to feel weak and hurt. He thought had never felt the pain of betrayal, but as he read on the article describing how he had so willingly fall prey to a woman's tactics to bring down a man, he wondered why did betrayal have to be so painful.

He could feel the gentle squeeze on his shoulder, and silently thanked Momo for doing that, or else he would've really ripped the magazine into pieces.

"… _Just remember my dear sisters, it's never impossible to bring down a man. As tough as he may seem on the outside, he might just be the easiest to tempt, if you have what it takes to make them fall for you._

_By: Ryuzaki Sakuno."_

He felt like puking.

"Oi, Echizen…" Momo called out as his best friend calmly put the magazine down and stood up.

Ryoma kept his mouth shut as he weaved his way through the crowd, out into the streets. He felt his fists clench, and his nails dug into his palms so hard he couldn't bring himself to care if his hands were bleeding.

He could hear somebody tailing after him as he walked down the road to his motorbike.

"You shouldn't act rash, you know." He recognized that voice. It was his damn old man.

"What do you mean, oyaji?"

Nanjiroh managed to stop his son, his hand resting onto Ryoma's shoulder.

"I know, you're angry, you're hurt, you feel betrayed…"

"Don't bring those up." He spoke back to his dad, not even turning around to look at Nanjiroh.

He heard his dad sigh and felt the hand on his shoulder disappear. "She's not like that, this must be a misunderstanding."

Nanjiroh heard his son scoff at his words. And without a words, Ryoma left his father and walked towards his motorbike.

He needed to get home. He needed to calm down.

* * *

She was wheezing by the time she got to his door. Hesitantly, she knocked on the door twice before it swung open revealing none other than Echizen Ryoma.

Sakuno felt her heart crumble to pieces when she saw his face, the way his eyes seem cold and distant, the way his lips tugged down at the tiniest fraction. She could feel her breath being caught in her throat as he said to her, his voice as cold as ice.

"What do you want?"

Stepping back a bit to give him space as he walked a step towards her, Sakuno bit her lower lip, not even daring to look up into his face.

"I-I… I came here to explain…"

"Explain what?" He managed to keep his voice as neutral as he could.

"That article, it wasn't me…"

She could hear him chuckle darkly as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his black slacks.

"Then what about my knees? Don't tell me that was your doppelganger whom I talked to at the training complex."

Sakuno could hear every venom in his voice, and she knew she deserved it. If she hadn't been more careful on her whereabouts, they wouldn't have been in this mess.

"I swear, Ryoma-"

"Don't call me that. I don't know you." He had cut in, causing her to gasp and look up at him.

She could feel the evil claws clawing at the back of her eyes, ready to let the tears cloud her vision. But she couldn't let them fall again. Not now.

"Why?" She whispered out, her voice shaky.

Ryoma had to look down to refrain himself from staring into her brown eyes. Her wide, brown eyes which he had once loved to drown into. He could already see the tears brimming in those eyes, and he berated himself mentally for still have feeling for the woman in front of him.

"I don't know you anymore, Ryuzaki. I thought I could trust you." He stopped there.

He didn't want to voice out how he had loved her, how he thought she was the one woman in his life he had ever wanted to be with. Somehow, deep inside, he knew maybe this wasn't her fault. Maybe the article wasn't written by her. That maybe someone was spying on her.

That idea to him was absurd. Why would someone spy on a woman reporter? It was him all along. They wanted him, not her.

He was a man of logic, and right now, his logic told him to stay away from her.

"Ryoma-kun, look at me."

He didn't do as told.

"Ryoma-kun, trust me, I swear."

Once again, he was a man of logic.

"Ryoma-kun, I love you."

That had him look up. A ghostly smirk was plastered onto his face, when all he wanted to do was wipe off her tears and kiss her silly. Because he loved her too. But how was he to trust someone whom had already broken that trust.

With his logic winning over his heart, he decided to step back from her. Before he closed the door in her face, he managed to say some words to her. And he didn't even wait for her to respond, because he knew her response at his words will break him further more.

"Then I'm sorry for what you did to those who you don't love."

* * *

**A/N: OHMIGODPLEASEDON'TSHOOTMEFORENDINGTHISCHAPTER! I promise, this will be the only heartbreaking scene in this story, because I always end my stories with a happy ending**. **I don't really have much to say, just that I've noticed that I've been getting less reviews. Why? Why? Do tell me my mistakes so that I can amend them? Is it the story line? I'm sorry Sweety but this is how I write my stories. I like 'em fluffy and well… fluffy! **

**Don't forget to review when you have the time. Even a 'Oh my god, this is nice!' would be okay. Am I asking too much?**

**Hugs and kisses!**


	15. Ch14: To Believe Without Proof

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

**A/N: Fuwah… I haven't been updating for a while, ne? I've been busy with midterm exams and all, but other than that I think I really don't have much of an excuse anyway. What? No, I'm not dead, I'm pretty much alive and still kickin' around. Aw… I know ya missed me right? In case you're still wondering, this is actually the last chapter of my story, and I'll wrap this up with an epilogue.**

**Enjoy.**

**Ch14: To Believe Without Proof.**

Sakuno swallowed thickly as the door was shut in her face, and his last words stung her so much that she wasn't sure if she could stay rooted on the same spot without choking.

Her legs wobbled slightly as she turned around to make a dash towards the elevators.

Out.

She needed to get out of the Condominium Complex. Her chest ached so much it made her feel nauseous.

Once she was safely in the elevator, she leaned into a corner.

"_Then I'm afraid of what you do to those who you don't love."_

"Oh god." She gasped as her legs gave way and she slumped.

Just when she thought she would never love again. Just when she thought her life wasn't going to be so bad because she had Ryoma to lean on. Just when she thought he could love her for who she was…

The doors opened as soon as it arrived on the ground floor, and with heavy steps, Sakuno vacated the complex. The cool night air hit her straight in the face as she stepped out the revolving doors. She walked a few steps, not knowing where to head to. It was too much for everything to sink in. Her chest hurt so much, and she didn't know what to do with it. It had been so long since she felt that same ache. It took her years to recover from her mother's death.

She tried to breathe, and her eyelids closed as she inhaled shakily.

Something cold landed on the tip of her nose, and slowly, tiredly, she opened her eyes to see snowflakes falling around her. She lifted her face to the sky, soft flakes falling on her cheeks.

It was already winter. It should be his birthday in two weeks. It had been _that_ long? She wondered.

It had been that long since she had met him. How months… ten? Ten months have passed, since he offered to pee in her cup of black coffee. He had been smirking at her when he said that.

Such an arrogant person. He was arrogant, cocky, an S-list asshole as Momo had once called him, but he was a good person. He trusted her enough to tell her about his knees. And even though she didn't know how it happened, but she felt like she had betrayed him.

Over. Everything was over.

No more of him patting her head and calling her 'Ace.'

No more of his rare smiles.

That ache in her chest twisted, and she couldn't help but bite her bottom lip from breaking down in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Ryoma-kun…" She whispered, but no voice came out.

Several by passers turned their heads towards her, and some of them wondered why a woman was looking at the snowing sky. Sakuno couldn't care less.

"Ryuzaki-san?"

Sakuno lowered her face to look for the familiar voice. It was tiny, the way the sight of Horio in his cherry red Porsche managed to tone down the twisting ache in her chest. The youngest General Manager of the Dragons poked his head out as he parked on her side of the road. A friendly smile on place, he ushered Sakuno to hop on. Not knowing what else to do, she complied and fastened the seatbelt as soon as she sat in the co-driver's seat.

"I'm not in the place to ask what you were doing here, but at least I can still give you a ride back home, right?"

Her eyes were unfocused when she looked at him. Horio let out a nervous laugh.

"Osakada-san told me about how you ran off suddenly. I thought you were at the bar. You must have been standing outside that complex for more than an hour, huh?"

"Oh." She replied, and lowered her head to stare at her hands in her lap.

It was silent for a few seconds when Sakuno thanked Horio, her voice soft.

He cleared his throat as they stopped at a T-junction, waiting for the red light to turn green. He casted his eyes towards the dashboard in front of Sakuno's seat, and he motioned towards an envelope.

"Actually, me and Inui-senpai have known about this… _incident_… a few moments before you guys did and we…we did um… some kind of background check. Open that envelope, Ryuzaki-san."

Sakuno reached for the envelope, and spilled the contents onto her lap. Several photos landed on her lap, a few stapled documents, and the similar scandalous pictures which were put into the Diva magazine dropped after. Most of the pictures showed a man with dark hair and a cunning smile. His eyes were narrow yet not shut tight when he smiled that smile of his. The red light turned green then, and Horio shifted into the first gear and drove again while he eyed Sakuno from the corner of his eye. He took it as a cue to continue when he saw her picking up a photo of the mysterious man.

"Inui-senpai, knowing him, did a few digging for the past hours and found him. His name's Mizuki."

Mizuki. That name triggered something in her memory, but whatever piece of memory that flashed at that time was instantly wiped off as soon as her eyes caught the signboard of an advertising company not more than a few blocks from the Arena.

The Eclipse Dragon Company.

That company where she would be transferred to starting from the next week. The building was only a few blocks away from Ryoma's place, but it felt so far away. Far away from his smart remarks and his deep voice. Everything. The guys whom she loved as brothers, Coach Nanoji, the perverted but funny man, Coach Tezuka's wise words and… Sayuri. From the way Ryoma was acting towards her a few hours ago, it seemed that he didn't want her to come near Sayuri.

The weight of it all hit her like a ton of bricks. Sakuno brought up a hand to wipe a single tear that managed to escape her eye.

"Ryuzaki-san, are you crying?"

Horio instantly regretted asking her that. Once his words sunk in, the tears just rolled down her cheeks. She broke down almost immediately, and Horio swallowed as he heard her heart-wrenching sob. He was never good with women to begin with, and a crying one at that.

"S-Sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"I-I re-really… messed up this time, right?"

They arrived at a gas station, and Horio chose a parking spot to stop for a while.

"Ryuzaki…"

Sakuno unfastened the seatbelt and hugged her knees. She trembled as she cried, that it panicked the young manager sitting in the driver's seat.

"I-I didn't mean to, I swear…. I never told anyone about his knees, Horio-kun… How did all of this happen? I thought… I thought we were… I love him, Horio-kun."

Horio sighed as he patted the woman's back.

"I know you didn't do it."

The woman was still crying when Horio plucked the picture of Mizuki from her clenched fingers.

"And that's why I'm showing you this guy."

Her crying toned down and she lifted her face to look at him, tears still rolling down her cheeks. She sniffed, and Horio couldn't help but notice the snot trailing down her nose. He inwardly sighed. He felt protective of her all of a sudden. Who wouldn't? Sakuno looked childlike in everything she did, and looking at her crying and sniffing as if she was a five year-old whom lost her mother, it wasn't surprising at all that he would do anything for her.

He always wanted a sister anyway.

"Wh-what about… him?"

Horio smoothed the wrinkles on the picture.

"I told you that Inui-senpai did some… background checks on that article in the Diva magazine. I don't know how he did it but he managed to squeeze information out of Shiiba-san, you know, the chief editor of Diva?"

Sakuno wiped off a trail of snot using the end of a sleeve, missing the way Horio grimaced. "Uh huh?"

Horio clucked his tongue and gave her his handkerchief. Taking the vibe, Sakuno accepted the hankie with a quite 'thanks' and blew her nose.

"Well, anyway, Inui-senpai was told a name, Mizuki… something. I can't remember. But you know how Inui-senpai, he immediately did a last-minute homework and he printed out Mizuki's information."

Trembling hands lifted a stapled document with the picture of the same cunning man on the top-right corner of the first page.

"I think I know him, Horio-kun."

Horio nodded, and stretched for a bit. "He's the one behind all of this. I still don't know why, but when I try calling Echizen about this, that guy didn't even answer his phone. He's probably killing time at the Arena… or some sports centre that I don't know of."

Sakuno swallowed as another batch of tears clawed her eyes.

She should have known. Mizuki.

She thought the man was supposed to be in a restraining order. What happened to the law? She thought he wouldn't bother her again but how in the world did he manage to frame her like this?

"Horio-kun… This man is Mizuki. He… he's supposed to be on a restraining order…"

"Yeah, Inui-senpai did mention about that. He was relieved of that restraining order a few months ago… Hey… do you know what made him do this?"

Her brows furrowed. Was it because of what she'd done in the past? After they were fresh graduates? Those years were long behind them.

But knowing Mizuki, that guy was already known to have a twisted mind.

"We both studied at the same university in Washington… we were fresh graduates when both of us got accepted to a local company in Shibuya."

Horio eyed her trembling hands holding the stapled documents. "Yeah, I've read that in the document before giving it to you. What happened after that?"

Sakuno nodded, and replaced the pictures and documents into the large envelope before she put it onto the dashboard.

"Um… when we worked together, he was pretty much everyone's favourite. Compared to me, he was a veteran. He got the best scoops and his journals and articles were often voted as the best among the other staffs, he used to mostly write about celebrities... you know, about nose jobs or… confidential divorces… No one knew how he even got wind of the gossips, which were all surprisingly true. Our former boss even guaranteed a spot for him in the main office."

"Damn, he must have gloated a lot on that, didn't he?"

Sakuno nodded and closed her eyes as a headache started to settle in. She hated crying. For one, she would get nose blocks and she would always feel her body temperature rise a few degrees, later leading to headaches.

"Of course he did…. Kept taunting me with a lifetime of office-boy errands and useless stories."

Horio nodded slowly. "…hence the reason you chose to write the Single Soul column, huh?"

The female reporter nodded. _And writing porn using Sweet Sakura as an alias, out of all things._

She didn't tell him that. No, God. No. It was enough when Tomoka had literally fainted after she found out about Sakuno's former alias.

"_And to think that I had dated and slept with guys way ahead of you! Sakuno, you dark horse!"_

A dry chuckle escaped Sakuno's lips as she remembered what Tomoka had yelled at her after the red head came to from her faint.

"Ryuzaki? You're laughing."

Sakuno cleared her throat and shook her head. "It's nothing… But anyway, as I said before, Mizuki was the most eligible employee one could ever find… before an incident happened…. Wait a minute… Horio-kun,"

"Incident? What happened? Hey, you okay?"

Horio waved a hand in front of her face. Sakuno blinked up at him, as a sudden realization hit her.

"I got him arrested one time, due to blackmailing."

"Blackmail?"

Sakuno nodded.

"He used some sort of reverse psychology to let his subject tell him everything. Literally everything… he also used this kind of… truth serum extracted from Passionflowers… harmine if I'm not mistaken, i-it's a… constituent in Passionflower extract. It can be used to get confessions… I can't remember how I knew about this, but I thought that it would be best if I told the chief and some cops… God, I think that's the reason…. When he got out of jail, he had been stalking me… and threatened me…"

Horio sat up straight. "Hence that restraining order that the court ordered on him. Geez, Ryuzaki… this is serious trouble."

Sakuno looked up at him, and cried again. "I know, Horio-kun… I'm such an idiot… I should have been more careful, I shouldn't have been so close to Ryoma-kun…"

Her cries filled the silence as minutes passed by. Horio sighed.

"You can sue him, Ryuzaki. For snooping around you and obstructing your privacy."

She wiped off her tears and took a shaky breath. "I just want to go home, Horio-kun… Please?"

The manager sighed. "Home, it is."

* * *

"Nii-chan, why aren't you sleeping in your room?"

Ryoma cracked open an eye to look at his younger sibling. Sayuri's eyes stared back at him, round and bright. She backed away when he sat up from the long couch. He ran a hand through his hair, tousled by his short nap. He looked around lazily, noticing that it was past eleven.

He also noticed the shopping bags sitting on the coffee table.

"You just came back?"

Sayuri nodded, and shrugged off her coat. "Just came back from shopping with Hana-chan."

Ryoma yawned, and didn't bother mentioning about her curfew. He didn't have the mood anyway.

He was tired.

Worn out.

Sayuri turned around to hang her coat by the door, and she raised a brow as she saw Ryoma staring at the blank t.v. screen. She waved a hand in front of his face, making him to look up at her.

He turned to her, and he noticed another thing. A scowl marred his face.

"What the hell are you wearing?"

Sayuri looked down at her pink Morning Musume T-shirt and blinked at him.

"My pink T-shirt?"

Her brother crossed his arms over his chest and sat straighter.

"Not that. That."

He motioned towards her chest, and she instantly crossed her arms to cover her breasts, an incredulous look plastered on her face.

"What the-… Nii-chan, you pervert! Just where do you think you're looking at?"

He could feel a vein popping on his temple.

"Idiot. I'm not a pervert. What were you thinking, going out wearing whatever it is under your shirt?"

"It's a push up bra!"

Ryoma's frown deepened.

"You'll never know what those perverts at school are thinking, with your breasts spilling out like that."

She looked at him, her eyes wide and her cheeks red. She was looking at him as if he wasn't the protective brother he was, but it was as if he was a child molester. Sayuri puffed out her cheeks before she screamed at him.

"Eww, Nii-chan! You're gross!"

He could feel his brow twitching. His sister was going to be the death of him.

"I'm not, and you should mind what you're wearing. You're barely seventeen and you're dressing up like a hooker."

That was obviously the wrong thing to say, because Sayuri burst into tears almost immediately. She threw the television remote control at him, which he dodged as easily, and pointed an accusing finger at him.

"You're saying that but I bet you like women with big boobs too! And I hate you! I freakin' hate you Nii-chan!"

"You're just saying that because you're mad right now."

Sayuri was silent for a few moments when suddenly she threw her purse at him.

"I know _you_ hate me! I know you're trying to get rid of me and send me to boarding school! That means I can hate you!"

She stomped her way towards her room.

Ryoma refrained from correcting his sister about her accusation before she stormed to her room.

To be honest, he actually wasn't interested in big breasted women. He had, in fact, grown a liking to normal-sized breasts.

Like Sakuno.

Not too huge, not too flat-chested. Just… perfect.

He cleared his throat to get rid of the one woman he didn't want to think about that time and his attention was snapped back to the present when he heard Sayuri bang her door.

Realization hit him.

Sayuri knew about the boarding schools?

His arms dropped to his sides as he leaned into the couch.

Ryoma almost forgot about sending her to boarding school. He never knew he would forget about the schools, because he actually kind of liked it when his sister was around. She was moody most of the time, she didn't really have manners, she was loud, but…

But he actually wanted her to live with him.

"God damn it." He cursed out loud when he stood up from the couch and walked towards Sayuri's door.

He stared at the doorknob and contemplated on what to say once he knocked the door.

Finding nothing valid to say, he scratched the back of his head.

_The hell with it all. _With that thought, he knocked on her door.

"Hey, Sayuri."

Her muffled voice answered him. "What?"

He leaned a shoulder against the door. "Can I come in?"

It took her a few seconds before she answered him. "I… guess so."

He twisted the doorknob, finding it unlocked, and pushed the door open to reveal her lying on her bed. She was staring at the ceiling, her wet mascara running down her cheeks like black tears, pretty much looking like a Martyr.

"You're a mess." He stated, as he stood by the entrance. He leaned against the doorframe, watching her glaring at him through her bloodshot eyes and wet make up.

"Well, no thanks to you. And just so you know, I've changed into a normal bra."

"I didn't ask."

Sayuri stared back at the ceiling, a pout on her face. "Just what are you doing in my room anyway? I'll be packing my stuff after I cry my eyes out."

Ryoma smirked. "And where do you think you're going?"

Sayuri sat up from her lying position. "You're gonna send me to boarding school, right? I saw the papers on your bedside table."

Ryoma raised a brow as he moved further into her room. "Why were you in my room?"

Sayuri ignored his disturbing glare, quite ashamed at being caught snooping around in his room.

"I-It's none of your business… But you _do _want to send me there… right?"

"No."

Her amber eyes widened.

Ryoma gave a heavy sigh as he moved to stand in front of her. He bent down and ruffled her already messy hair.

"I can't believe I'm saying this but… I kinda like having you around. I'm not sending you away, that's for sure."

Sayuri blinked at him owlishly, and he answered her clueless blinks with a small grin. She swallowed.

"You're not… sending me away? Do you mean it?"

He nodded, and it surprised him that he was so sure when he did. His sister's lips wobbled, and again, she cried.

"Geez, stop crying already. If it makes you happy then… I'm okay with you staying here… I guess."

Sayuri's ears perked up.

"I was really happy today, Nii-chan."

He was silent for a few seconds, just watching the hopeful expression that his sister was wearing on her face, his hand still in her ruffled hair.

"You still can't wear that push-up thing."

The girl gave a long suffering sigh. "Fine. Geez.'

She wiped off the remaining tears with the sleeves of her pyjamas and suddenly she felt like giggling.

"It's really funny, anyway… Nee-chan was right. You wouldn't send me away."

His hand froze in Sayuri's dark hair. He pulled away from his sister and stood facing the bedroom windows, his back to his sister.

Ryuzaki Sakuno.

What was he going to do with her?

He remembered the words he said to her before he closed the door.

"_Then I'm afraid of what you do to those who you don't love."_

He ran a hand through his hair, inwardly cursing the mean words he had said to her. He didn't mean to say those words.

He had felt so mad at her.

He felt betrayed.

He felt… hurt.

He could never believe he would even feel hurt. She was special to him. That was why when he read the article he acted so cruel to her.

He didn't want to.

But he did anyway.

Because she told the world about his private life, the pains in his knees, his favourite Ponta… everything.

He didn't want to believe it was her, because he knew her.

He knew she wasn't the kind of person who would sell secrets for her own benefits. She looked too innocent for that.

She loved him, didn't she?

He could see it, the way she looked at him, he knew she was real.

But that article…

His thoughts were halted when he felt Sayuri's arms hugging him from behind.

"You're thinking about Sakuno nee-chan, right?"

He didn't answer. He felt Sayuri letting go of him.

"I know about that article and I… I don't think that was her."

Ryoma turned around to look at his sister.

"Why are you saying that? It was clear that _she _wrote that."

Stubbornly, Sayuri shook her head. "It wasn't her… Nee-chan's different… can't you feel it? She's not like everyone else."

Ryoma looked away. "She wouldn't be 'different' if she wrote about my mother in that article. About how I was easy to be fooled by a woman like her. She's just like every other reporter, just like those paparazzi junkies. Selling other people's personal stories for their own good."

His sister frowned.

"Don't talk about her like that!"

He turned around again, not wanting to believe his sister. Great, just when she was finally calming down, they've gotten into another mess.

"But it's true, Sayuri."

The younger Echizen growled out in frustration before she punched his back.

"You're an idiot! It's obvious that's not her! She wouldn't sell your secrets, Nii-chan!"

"Then how do you explain the part when she wrote about the pains in my knees? She's the only one who knew about it apart from Momo."

Sayuri froze. Then she pouted.

"W-Well, maybe somebody spied on her or something! But you can't accuse her, Nii-chan! You're supposed to trust her!"

Ryoma turned around again, the anger in his eyes evident.

"I _did _trust her, and you can see now what happened. Tell me, why does anybody want to spy on a mere reporter?"

He watched as his sister casted her eyes downwards. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants.

"Thought so. I can't trust anyone after this."

Sayuri looked up into his face.

"You're lying aren't you? Nee-chan's a good person… I don't wanna believe you."

Ryoma shrugged, and let himself out of the girl's room. Without even a backward glance, he closed her door.

"Fine."

* * *

"Tomo-chan…"

Said name turned to her friend, a delicate brow raised. She watched as Sakuno take a sip of her warm milk before continuing.

"Let's swear off men for a while… ne?"

The reporter had her eyes bright and round and glassy, as if hoping that her best friend would agree. But Tomoka couldn't.

"Sorry, girl. But I… can't right now."

Sakuno frowned. "You're dating somebody?"

Her friend blushed a bit, and Sakuno somehow knew the man she was dating.

"Wait, is it… Horio-kun?"

She watched with wide eyes as the tell-tale blush on her friend deepened. Tomoka nodded.

"It's actually been a while now, so sorry, I just can't."

Sakuno's mouth formed a small 'o', and put down her warm mug onto the coffee table to hug her knees. A smile formed on her lips.

"Congratulations, Tomo-chan."

Tomoka turned to her childhood friend. It had been just after seven in the morning and Sakuno was just out of the shower when she came to help the reporter pack her belongings into boxes. It was now half past ten in the morning and they've finished nearly half of Sakuno's apartment, thanks to the small one bedroom unit. It would take about half a day to finish packing her things and by tomorrow evening Sakuno would be moving into her new apartment. A unit nearer to her new workplace. A three bedroom unit with two bathrooms and a kitchen the size of her former living room.

The girl should be happy, but Tomoka could see nothing.

She sighed as she gently squeezed Sakuno's small shoulder.

"Hey, I'm sorry."

The auburn-haired woman turned to her, smile still in place. "Why are you sorry? Isn't it good, that you're dating Horio-kun? He's a nice guy."

Tomoka shook her head. "I know, I'm very lucky but now's not about me. Are you… okay… with all of this?"

The smile melted off Sakuno's face, and her eyes dropped to her toes.

"Do you mean about Mizuki… or that article… or about me and… Ryoma-kun?"

A frown marred Tomoka's forehead. "About Mizuki, about that article… everything… Are you okay, with how things are going?"

Sakuno shrugged half-heartedly.

"I don't really know what to do with Mizuki and that article, Horio-kun advised me to sue him or something…"

She laughed softly, and continued. "But about Ryoma-kun… I-I don't… know…"

Tomoka's eyes softened as she saw the struggle Sakuno was fighting. She had never seen her best friend this sad, Sakuno had never looked so defeated ever since she lost her mother. The small woman had gone through many things, too many hardships in her life and here Tomoka was, living life problem-free. She was just happy and content selling shoes and dating different guys but Sakuno had gone through so much hurt since the first day the Ryuzaki started her career.

Suddenly Tomoka felt like crying too. She sniffed, and Sakuno's head snapped towards the red head.

"Tomo-chan? Are you crying?"

Tomoka angrily wiped off the forming tears using the hem of her sleeve.

"Damn it, Sakuno! What's wrong with you? You've gone through so much and yet _I'm _the one crying here! Is this karma?"

Sakuno smiled as she handed the tissue box over to her friend. Tomoka's cell phone rang, and after a few minutes on the phone, she hung up and got ready to leave Sakuno's apartment.

"Sorry, girl! My boss is asking for extra manpower in the store."

"it's okay, I can manage."

Tomoka sighed heavily and pulled Sakuno into a tight hug.

"Don't burn yourself when I'm not here, okay? Tell me immediately if something goes wrong, got that?"

Sakuno replied with a giggle. "Of course, Tomo-chan. You need to hurry, you know."

With a last pinch to Sakuno's cheek, Tomoka hurriedly hailed a cab and disappeared within three minutes.

A shiver ran down through her body and Sakuno quickly closed the door to prevent the heat from escaping her apartment. She walked towards the couch she decided to leave behind, and plopped onto it. She lied there to stare at the ceiling.

It was Friday. The day when the Dragons would meet their arch enemy, the Kanto Gods. And the day when Ryoma would come face-to-face with the man whom caused the pains in his knees, Atobe Keigo.

They would start their practice at three, and the match would start four hours after that. She wondered what Ryoma would be doing now. He was probably training by his own at that place again when she had first noticed his knees.

Echizen Ryoma.

She sighed heavily as she thought of the article.

Even if she told him about Mizuki, the damage was already done. The secret was out, his personal life was told to the whole world and he probably blamed her for following him around without noticing Mizuki spying on her.

She _was _promoted to a better job, but Mizuki had also done the damage to her personal life. Sure, she was given a better place to live in, the home of her dreams, a complete three bedroom unit with a master bedroom and a nice living room. Floor-to-ceiling windows to a balcony overseeing the whole town and two spacious bathrooms. The kitchen had electric stoves installed and she could finally cook in a kitchen without worrying about limited moving space. It was what she always wanted. The new place was the main reason she even accepted this job from Kevin Schneider. Her sole goal had been to make an interview on Ryoma so that the other men would look up to her.

She nearly laughed from the irony of it all.

Here she was, packing for her new future. She _was _promoted to a better-paying job because of her article on Ryoma… But she was not happy at all.

She had lost the only one man who appreciated her as who she was. The first she had ever loved with all her heart. Ryoma felt so real to her and she had no idea if her heart could ever open up to anyone other than him.

Sakuno unwillingly let a tear roll down her cheek.

She missed him. She would no longer work with the Dragons.

Maybe she should visit them for the last time that night.

And maybe she could see him for the last time.

* * *

Sakuno stood by the door frame, watching the usual ruckus in the men's locker room. They didn't notice her lone small figure, watching them with her brown eyes. It was an hour before their match started, but they looked relaxed, composed. She saw Ryoma sitting on a bench, his face indifferent as he looked at a piece of paper. It was probably their game arrangements, and he nodded at something Momo was saying. Eiji suddenly came bouncing at the Captain and said something to make him scowl.

She wished she had the courage to walk up to them and say her good-byes properly.

"Ryuzaki-san?"

She turned around and saw Inui nearing her. He had a notebook in a hand, and used the other to push his glasses up his nose bridge. He stopped next to the woman.

"Hello, Inui-san."

The spectacled man looked at where she was looking a few minutes prior, and he turned to her, his voice lowered. He motioned towards the A4 envelope she was holding.

"Have you made a decision yet? About Mizuki and that article."

Sakuno shook her head. "I'm not here about that article… I just… want to say good bye to the guys… Oh, and I'm thinking of handing this to Ryoma-kun. The least I can do is let him know who to sue if things get out of hand."

Inui nearly snorted. "Echizen doesn't sue others. He handles things differently. Not as violent as Momoshiro though."

She laughed softly. "I think you're right…"

"Absolutely. Anyway, I'm going in to give these guys a briefing."

Inui walked further into the room, and stopped to turn around to motion her to come along. Sakuno shook her head.

"I'll just stay here."

He shrugged, and continued further into the room. He called out for everyone to gather for a briefing, and the players surrounded the manager in less than three seconds.

Sakuno stayed where she originally was, watching them listening intently to Inui's data. Eiji was scratching his head, trying to butt in when he thinks Inui left out some details and being threatened by Inui's Special Juice as usual, Bobby Chin and Vlad were frowning as Inui spoke while trying to automatically translate what their manager just said to be put to use for later reference, and Kaidoh was trying not to grimace when Inui talked about the Shishido-Ootori pair.

"… And Echizen, as expected, you're going against Atobe Keigo."

"Hn."

Her eyes immediately spotted him, leaning against someone's locker, not wearing a cap on his head like usual. He was eyeing the Dragon's logo in the middle of the room and slowly he lifted his face to lock gazes with Sakuno.

She seemed surprised when he stood there just looking at her, and she blinked a few times and looked away, a blush on her cheeks. She covered the bottom half of her face with an envelope and it made his eyes glance at it before he tried to pay attention to Inui's briefing.

"That's all guys. Remember, whatever happens, you've tried your best."

The players dispersed to their respective lockers to get ready, some of them went back to the court for last-minute training, and Ryoma walked back to his locker, his back to Sakuno.

She stood there, still thinking of what to say when Eiji spotted her almost immediately after Inui left the room.

"Sakuno-chin!"

Heads turned to her, and the guys started acknowledging her. They all waved to her, some of them even patted her head before resuming on their individual tasks. Eiji pulled her in, sitting her onto a bench near his locker.

"I heard you got promoted! When are you moving? Wait,I forgot to Congratulate you. Congrats, Tiger-chan"

Sakuno laughed as he ruffled her hair. "Thank you, I'm moving tomorrow… but I won't start until Monday."

The Acrobatic player grinned, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. "You're not gonna be with us again, huh?"

She nodded, and tried to pat his back reassuringly, but it didn't work. Eiji sighed.

"Man, just when we're warming up to you… Hm? What's that in your hands?"

Sakuno's eyes dropped to the documents in the envelope on her lap.

"I'm going to give this to Ryoma-kun."

Eiji nodded. "I see, it's about that… article huh? Horio told us about it this morning, but Echizen wasn't here."

He pouted. "But he wouldn't want to listen anyway. But we all trusted you, Sakuno-chin!"

Sakuno smiled, trying to fight back the tears starting to well up. She felt touched that the guys still believed her, but she had already made the decision. She had accepted that new job offer for Ryoma's sake. She didn't know, they wouldn't know what else would happen if she continued to work with the guys. She didn't want to hurt anybody else, she didn't want to hurt Ryoma, and she had no intention of hurting herself again.

"Tiger, ya should go to him now."

She looked up to see Momo grinning at her. "Momoshiro-san?"

He pointed towards the space where Ryoma's locker was.

"He might have said hurtful things to ya, but he's just doing that because he cares about you too much to believe that article."

Nodding, Sakuno made her way to Ryoma's locker. He was sitting on a bench, tying his shoelaces. His cap was back on his head, his racquet was next to him. He was ready to face Atobe Keigo.

The squeak of her rubber soles stopped his hands. But he didn't look up from his shoes, and continued.

"Hello, Ryoma-kun."

He didn't answer her, and finished tying his shoelaces. It was as if she wasn't even there in the locker room standing in front of him when he stood up from the bench and turned around to lock his locker. He stood there, his back to her.

After a few seconds of silence, Sakuno cleared her throat.

"I-I came to… to wish the guys luck… and I came here to see you."

"I thought we had nothing to do with each other anymore."

He turned around then, and Sakuno was met with his amber eyes looking back at her. Any thought of fixing things with him instantly evaporated when she saw his apathetic eyes. She swallowed, and averted her eyes to look at something. Anything, just not his eyes. She settled on his red racquet lying on the bench. She took a deep breath, and without looking at him, she handed him the envelope.

"Here… About that article… this man wrote it. He wanted to ruin my life so he… framed me. But I don't expect you to believe me, Ryoma-kun. Inui-senpai said that you can sue him… if…something else happens."

He took the envelope from her, not once his eyes looked away from her face.

"What do you expect me to do?"

She turned around, hiding the tears welling up in her eyes. She didn't want him to see her crying.

"I-I'm not… expecting anything from you…. But just so you know, I didn't write that article, I never told anyone about your knees and your mother… I want you to know that I'll never write anything about you in the papers after this."

Ryoma's eyes dropped to the envelope in his hands, and he itched to take a look inside it. But that would be later, after he beat Atobe.

"You won't, because you've got another job."

She nodded, and she turned around. She smiled at him, and he saw the tears in her eyes.

She knew he saw her eyes, but she didn't care anymore.

"Can you do me a favour, Ryoma-kun?"

He didn't answer, but she continued anyway.

"Please win this match. And… Goodbye…"

He watched as her smile widened into a grin, ready to say something to him before she left the locker room for good.

"You big dumb kabocha."

She turned around as soon as she said that and marched quickly towards the doors. Eyes turned to him as they saw Sakuno rushing out the door, trying her best not to cry in the middle of a room full of men.

Ryoma ignored their burning gazes as one after another left the room to prepare for the upcoming match.

Did they think he _wanted_ to make her cry?

He never wanted to make her cry.

* * *

Sakuno sighed heavily as she leaned against a pile of boxes.

When she had stepped out of the locker room, she had all but run as fast as she could to the elevators. She tried to hold in her stubborn tears when she walked towards her car in the parking lot. As soon as she reached the traffic light to her apartment, the tears won.

She drove home crying.

"Stupid, stupid me!"

She had hit herself on the head as she locked her door and went straight to continue filling the boxes with her things.

She busied herself, cleaning and scrubbing the toilet to get her mind off of Ryoma. She cranked the radio volume to the maximum as she gritted her teeth while scrubbing off stubborn spots on the kitchen sink.

When she finished packing her old books did she finally stopped doing anything at all.

It was futile. She couldn't do it. She couldn't forget Ryoma.

Her eyes went to the remote control atop her small television. The match should have started already. Her hand itched to turn on the t.v. to watch his match.

Sakuno started as her phone rang. Sighing for the nth time, she cleared her throat before she picked up the receiver.

"Hello, this is Ryuzaki."

* * *

His name was called, and he answered with a curt nod of his head. He took a breath, and stood up to walk towards the middle of the court. His opponent stood on the other side of the net, smugly smirking at him.

"We meet again, Echizen."

"Hn."

Atobe's smirk widened as Ryoma answered, his stoic face unchanging, even after he squeezed Ryoma's hand a little bit tighter than necessary.

"I heard about your knees. Are you sure you can play?"

"A hundred per cent."

The self-proclaimed Master of the Kanto Gods snorted as he rested his racket on a shoulder.

"Then this time I should really make sure you can't move your knees. That way, I'm sure to win this time, eh?"

Ryoma smirked. "In case you haven't heard, I've been training to beat you under half an hour. Scared now, Monkey King?"

If Atobe was mad, he didn't show it. He ignored Ryoma's last comment as he positioned himself to serve.

"Echizen, if I were you, I'd be praying to get out of here alive."

He bent his knees, racquet in his left hand, ready to intercept Atobe's serve. A half grin found its way to Ryoma's face as he watched Atobe toss the ball into the air.

"No way in hell."

* * *

His knees were so far great, but his score was tied to Atobe. Now that, wasn't great. Ryoma knew Atobe's backhand could be called one of the Monkey King's weaknesses, and he knew Atobe must have trained to perfect the lack of strength in his shots, but never had he really anticipated that Atobe's shots were quite stronger than before. And though his knees hadn't been acting up on him, he was already an hour in the game. There was no telling if his knees were really healed as Inui had predicted them to be. He couldn't take any chances. Especially against Atobe.

"Damn." He cursed under his breath as he hit an out ball.

Atobe smirked from the other side, and he just wished someone would throw something, _anything _at the Monkey King to wipe off that smirk.

"Game, Atobe!"

And now Atobe was in the lead. He knew Momo and the others were watching him, Nanjiroh was probably praying to the heavens so that Ryoma would win without any serious injuries, and Sayuri was biting her nails. Literally.

But Sakuno wasn't there.

And that annoyed the hell out of him.

He was still hurt when she came to see him a few hours prior, but even though he was still pissed at her for the article, he couldn't deny the fact that he had actually missed her. He was surprised himself when his insides fluttered when he heard her voice talking to him, and he had not wanted anything else but to just hold her and shake her and hold her again. He wanted her, but he had been confused.

When she gave him the envelope, he had already made his mind that he didn't need proof that she was innocent. He believed her and he trusted her. But she was already gone the moment he decided he wanted her to stay to watch his match.

He was such a mess.

"Echizen to serve!"

He readied himself to deliver his Twist Serve as he eyed his opponent. Atobe was smirking smugly at him and he wanted to ignore that smug look. He needed Sakuno to tell him that he should ignore Atobe's arrogant remarks and he wanted her to tell him that she believed in him. He wanted her. He wanted her so much to be there with her braided hair and her goofy smile cheering him on. He wanted to see her sitting next to Sayuri with her trusty camera. He wanted-

"Ryoma-kun!"

His ears perked, and through the sea of different voices, he heard her. He turned his head so fast towards her voice that he nearly got a whiplash doing that. The ball was left untouched as it hit the floor, and bounced along the green court forgotten.

There Sakuno was, wearing her brown coat over her Dragon's jersey. Her hair was braided, and she was panting as she stood there on the topmost mezzanine level. Heads turned to her as she clumsily ran down the steps towards Sayuri, muttering apologies and at the same time trying to bow apologetically at those who she bumped into.

She stopped next to Sayuri.

"Ryoma-kun, what are you doing?"

Atobe raised a brow as he saw Ryoma stood frozen on the court, even when the umpire called out to him to continue his serve. The woman who suddenly came into view on the big screen was calling out to Ryoma.

"Ryuzaki…"

He couldn't believe his eyes. He watched, ignoring the umpire as she continued.

"You have to catch up, Ryoma-kun! Don't let Atobe-san beat you!"

Ryoma finally snapped to reality. He scowled and ignoring the umpire and the ruckus around him, he marched to her.

"What the hell, Ryuzaki?"

The umpire was already stepping down his seat and called out to Ryoma.

"Echizen-san, you should continue with the match."

Sakuno noticed the umpire and she turned wide eyes towards the man, apologising.

"I-I'm so sorry! Ryo-Ryoma-kun, you should-"

Ryoma's glare silenced her. He motioned her to come closer.

"What are you doing here?"

Sakuno smiled sheepishly.

"W-Well, I wanted to cheer you on because I heard from Sayuri-chan th-that you were losing and-"

He could feel Sayuri fidgeting nervously even when he had his eyes set on Sakuno. He could deal with his sister later for spreading that false news. He was only one game behind, he wasn't losing damn it.

"Come here, Ryuzaki."

She nervously bent down towards Ryoma, and was caught off-guard when he placed his cap onto her head.

Collective gasps resounded throughout the indoor stadium and Sakuno blushed when she noticed Ryoma was very near.

"B-But… Ryoma-"

She was cut off when he tipped her chin down with his fingers and kissed her on the lips for everyone to see. The camera zoomed in on them, and a collective 'Aaawww' was heard as the audiences momentarily forgot about the game.

Even the umpire put a hand over his heart at the touching romantic scene, before he snapped back to reality. He cleared his throat, trying not to grin at Ryoma when the Dragon's Captain broke the kiss.

"Keep that for me and watch me play, eh?"

Sakuno nodded mutely, a hand used to cover her mouth.

That was all Ryoma needed for him to return to the court and finish his match. Without forgetting to apologise to the umpire.

He smirked arrogantly at his opponent, before he tossed the ball into the air to serve.

_Just watch me._

* * *

"Game and Match! Echizen! Seven games to five!"

Cheers shook the cinder-block walls of the stadium as the umpire called out. Ryoma sighed, relieved that he beat his arch enemy. He took the hand Atobe lend out.

"Nice game, Echizen."

Smirking, Ryoma rested his racquet on a shoulder and tipped the brim of his cap.

"Of course, you were going against me."

"Keh, whatever."

Atobe motioned towards Sakuno, whom was looking at Ryoma, wide-eyed. When the Monkey King caught her staring at Ryoma, she blushed. Before Ryoma could turn around, she quickly made an escape in the midst of cheers.

"You better catch up to your woman."

Blinking, Ryoma turn around and caught the reporter hurrying to get past the cheering fans. He scowled and walked towards Sakuno's general direction.

"The hell you're getting away."

His team mates snickered and wolf whistled as he jumped over the divider and blocked Sakuno's path. She collapsed into his chest, and she pulled back with red cheeks.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Sakuno looked up into his face, and mustered up enough courage to tell him to step away.

"I-I need t-to hurry home-"

She didn't get to finish when the reporters surrounded him, and he was too late to pull Sakuno to him when a male cameraman accidentally elbowed Sakuno out of the swarm of people. He cursed inwardly as she took the opportunity to make a dash to the exit, leaving him to deal with the swarming press.

She hurried to the elevators, and once she stepped in, she leaned against the wall panting heavily.

That was embarrassing.

He had kissed her, in front of a humongous crowd. And to make matters worse, she caught Sengoku, Eiji and Bobby Chin winking mischievously at her before she bolted out of the exit.

What was she thinking, calling out to him as if she was miles and miles away from him? One minute he broke her heart, and then suddenly he acted as if they had dated for such a long time. One minute she was crying her eyes out, and then suddenly she had bolted out of her apartment to cheer him on like a love-sick high school girl.

She covered her face and gave out a frustrated groan when she stepped out into the parking lot.

Sakuno drove home still flustered and speechless. When she entered her home, she left the front door unlocked, in case Tomoka wanted to drop by. With that in mind, she walked into her room. The boxes were the least in there, and her bed was left as it is. The tiger plushie that Ryoma gave her sat next to her pillow, and she climbed onto her bed to pick it up. She sat on her heels on the bed as she played with the whiskers and long fake eyelashes, a fond smile on her lips.

She didn't notice the figure standing behind her.

Amber eyes softened as he saw her on her bed, fiddling with the tiger plushie he had given her. She must have sat looking at the tiger for quite a while, because she didn't even notice the rustle of his coat when he entered.

She had left him to deal with the annoying press, and after Nanjiroh and the others came to the rescue, he had made catching her his mission in life. He had bolted out of the exit she had used, but she had already vacated the Arena. With a curse, he fired up his Land Cruiser and his tyres screeched as he drove away to her small apartment.

He wasn't going to miss the chance to talk to her. He knew she would be moving only a few blocks away from her former home, but he wanted badly to let her know he believed her. He could almost hear Rinko encouraging him as he parked at a curb at the end of a street to her apartment. He frowned as he saw the slightly ajar door of her apartment, and made a side note to remind her to always lock her doors before he stepped into her home.

Only the light from the kitchen and her room illuminated the small apartment, boxes piled up in a corner where her working desk had been if he remembered correctly. Instantly, Ryoma headed to her room. He didn't bother to knock when he found her smiling fondly and playing with the tiger plushie. She had undone her braid, and her smooth hair spilled over her shoulders tempting him to run his fingers through her silky locks. It hit him like a tonne of bricks when he saw her sitting on the bed in her loose University of Washington T-shirt, her previous Dragon's jersey hung by the door.

He decided that he wanted her as a part of his life.

With that decision in mind, he spoke up.

"You didn't lock your front door."

She started, and her hands froze.

"Ryoma-kun…"

He walked closer to her, watching the way she turned her face sideways a bit, but not enough for him to see her profile.

"I've opened the envelope you gave me."

She kept silent for a few seconds when she spoke up, her voice soft.

"And you believe me now?"

He sighed almost inaudibly. Sakuno turned around to fully face him, and stood up in front of him. A light blush dusted her cheeks even as she looked at him as if she was angry.

She was angry at him. What was he thinking, kissing her in public? And it made her angry to know that he only believed her after she told him about Mizuki. If he really loved her, he wouldn't have waited for evidence to really believe her side of the story.

"Can you please get out of my room? I-If you haven't noticed, I'm packing my stuff."

Ryoma did the opposite, he moved closer to her, not missing the way her blush deepened.

"Do you love me?"

She looked up into his eyes, tears starting to cloud her brown eyes. She nearly cursed out loud when she noticed –too late- that she would always cry whenever he was involved.

"I do, but obviously it's a waste seeing that it took you proof to actually believe me. Maybe things would have turned out different if you had trusted me in the beginning."

She flattened her palms against his chest with all the intention of pushing away. But the feel of his hard muscle under her hands just tempted her to lean in further. Ryoma didn't even budge, just like that time when he teased her about her new appearance.

"It wasn't because of the proof, I actually do believe in you."

Sakuno stopped pushing. Ryoma brushed a thumb against her cheek.

"Only that it took me a while to really convince myself that I don't really care even if there was absolutely no proof that you didn't write that article. I don't really know why, and it's driving me crazy to know that I… I need you. I really, really need you. You're important to me and… Shit… I'm sorry… Crap, this is getting cheesy."

She curled her fingers against his chest, bunching the front of his grey T-shirt as she buried her flushed face against him. He could feel the corners of his mouth tugging up as he heard her muffled voice.

"B-But you were very m-mean to me… mou."

He kissed the top of her head.

"Do you wanna know something?"

He could feel her warmth seeping through his clothes. "What is it?"

He cupped her face in his hands and brought up her face to look at him. "I…"

Ryoma cursed inwardly as he couldn't bring himself to say those words. He wanted her to know how important she was to him, but he just… couldn't. He lowered his head instead and captured her lips in a kiss, a kiss so slow and tender. He ran his hands lightly over her arms, slowly moving up to her face, her temples and ran through her silky hair. She sighed with pleasure, shifting closer, wrapping her arms around his neck as she returned the kiss, her tongue stroking against his shyly. He groaned at her actions and deepened the kiss, fuelling the burn in his gut for her. She clutched fistfuls of his T-shirt as she went soft beneath his ravaging mouth, and white-hot pleasure consumed her as he slanted his mouth over hers again and again. She trembled against him, and when she felt as if her legs would give way, she pulled away and pressed her face into his shoulder, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist as she tried to catch her breath.

"U-Um.., Ryoma-kun?"

He closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of her small hands when she slipped her hands under his T-shirt to slide up his abdomen. Trying not to sound too desperate for what she was suggesting, he managed to answer her. "What is it?"

Her warm breath tickled his earlobe as she spoke into his ear. "C-Can you… stay… t-tonight?"

Sakuno buried her face against his chest, hiding the deepening blush on her cheeks when she asked him. She heard him chuckle a bit before he used a thumb to lift her face by the chin.

"Hell yeah."

Sakuno smiled shyly when she felt the muscle under her palms flex. She giggled when he kissed the side of her neck.

"I'll even keep you warm."

* * *

**A/N: Oh my god! I can't believe I wrote this much! Isn't this a super long chapter? I was thinking of breaking this into two parts but I made a last-minute decision to just write it as a chapter. How was it? I know I might have put too much cheesy stuff in this chapter, but I just can't help myself. RyoSaku fans and writers are lessening and I just wanted to turn up the romance volume. Oh, and I should warn you guys that the epilogue will be posted in a few days, but I'm still worrying over the rating. Should this story be M-rated? Because the epilogue would be bordering M but… there would be nothing graphic in there so I just might leave this story as T?**

**Gah, whatever. I'll see what you guys have to say about this matter. What's most important is that I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Reviews are highly appreciated. ^-^**

**Hugs and kisses!**


	16. Epilogue

**Game and Match: Sakuno?**

_**Epilogue  
**_

He woke up to the sound of Sakuno's cell phone ringing. He turned his head sideways to see Sakuno carefully turning around to answer; her bare back to him.

He listened to her talking to Tomoka softly, not wanting to wake him up. He was wide awake already. Her soft hair spilled against the white pillow and some landed on his chest, exposing one side of her neck. He turned his body sideways, a hand under his chin, as he gently traced her exposed soft neck with his fingers. He smirked when he felt her relaxing to his touch, already knowing he was awake already. A smile reached her lips when she felt his hand traced her spine, and feeling his lips trail kisses where his fingers touched. He knew Sakuno was blushing when he heard her clear her throat when his hand snaked around her waist and his kisses went lower down her spine. He stopped at the small of her back, and at the same time Tomoka had hung up. She turned to him, and he kissed her flat stomach, tracing her tattoo with his fingers.

"Morning, Sakuno."

He murmured against her stomach. She smiled shyly at him when he shifted so he was halfway on top of her.

"M-Morning."

She sighed when she felt his hand, previously on her stomach, moved upwards to slide up the side of her body, stopping just below her ribs.

Ryoma kissed her throat and was about to continue further downwards when a Himalayan cat suddenly hopped onto the bed. Sakuno laughed as he groaned out loud and pulled the covers to cover her chest. Karupin snuggled against her lap, and Ryoma dropped back to his place next to Sakuno, glaring at the cat.

"Don't tell me Karupin had been sleeping under this bed the whole night?"

Sakuno smiled as Karupin turned on his back to let her scratch her belly. The cat purred as she complied.

"Guess so. Poor kitten."

Ryoma tugged at the cat's tail playfully, but the feline ignored his tug. "He's not a kitten anymore. He's just a perverted old cat."

"Meow." Karupin answered back lazily.

Sakuno sat up straighter and by doing that, she exposed her bare back to Ryoma's eyes. He sat up and let his wife lean into his chest. Her soft hair tickled his skin as she shifted closer. He fought himself from groaning. She was tempting him without even knowing it.

The glint of her wedding band on her left hand caught his attention. Wrapping his arms around her to pull her closer, he observed the ring on her finger.

They had been married for three months already, and it had been three months of him waking up to see her smiles, three months of eating her cooking, and three months of going through the days watching her pull on her socks before they both got to work. Never in a million years would he have thought that even mundane happenings in his life could be enjoyable if Sakuno was there.

That night when he came to her small apartment, they had locked her front door in a haste and made love through the night, not even minding the mountain of boxes in her room. He fought back a grin as he remembered how self-conscious she was of her appearance. She was perfect, not a single spot marred her skin, and he had kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her stomach, her knees to reassure her that she was as beautiful as he had imagined. She had smiled up at him, and shyly whispered a silent 'okay', she pulled him down for a searing kiss and they got to _work_, oh yes, they did. He remembered helping her load her boxes in a truck the next morning; and Sayuri offered to help clean the new unit. The three of them had missed lunch and compensated by having dinner in her new house, with Sakuno and Sayuri laughing together at the younger girl's silly jokes.

Momo had called him that midnight and told him that he, Vlad and Kaidoh had 'taken care' of Mizuki. Ryoma had nodded, and wondered what the guys had actually done to the twisted ex-reporter. The following day the news revealed that an unconscious but still alive man dressed in only a tutu was found in the corner of an alley. The cops had mentioned that the man had woken up in a clinic, rushed to the cops and begged them to send him somewhere safe.

Sakuno had been working for more than a month when the Tokyo Dragons won the Tennis Cup. The team celebrated at a bar near her house, and he clearly remembered staying the night at her place after that. The next morning he had hugged her from behind as she was busy sorting her books in _his _shirt, and proposed to her. It hadn't taken a second when she turned around to face him and said 'yes, yes, yes.' Thanks to Tomoka and Sayuri, also with some supervising from Nanny Tinsel, they wedded successfully five weeks after that. He had no qualms about the arrangements because his job had been to show up at the altar, take her hand and say 'I do.' That had really easy.

But watching her dance with every of his damn teammates - and even with the old Kevin Schneider- during the reception had been _really _hard.

Ryoma had insisted Sakuno move to his crib after Sayuri decided for herself she wanted to move to a boarding school in Kyoto. Apparently, she had an interest in country boys and promised to both Ryoma and Sakuno she would behave and bring back a cute country bumpkin as a boyfriend.

Karupin joined the couple after Nanjiroh had dumped the cat at them, saying that they should practice taking care of a brat before they would have little ones of their own. Sakuno had blushed when Nanjiroh had mentioned about grandchildren. It didn't even affect Ryoma who in turn told his father to mind his own business because they _were _working on having children of their own. The Dragons Captain even emphasized that they would work on it _without _the perverted old man's intervention.

But honestly, Ryoma didn't even mind about family planning. If Sakuno were to be pregnant, he would be as happy and contented as she was.

"Ne, Ryoma…"

He loosened his hold on her as her voice brought him back to reality. She turned around to look into his face, and she smiled warmly at him. As usual, he felt his insides warm up and when she leaned into him to press a kiss on his lips, he felt that familiar tingling tickling the insides of his stomach. She always had that effect on him, and he silently prayed that it would last as long as he lived with her.

"What?"

She turned around to straddle him, her bare thighs underneath the covers warming his lap.

"Sayuri-chan called me yesterday before you came back from the airport."

The blanket covering her chest slid down between their bodies and his eyes dropped to her chest, pressed up against him. He distractedly told Sakuno to continue.

"She said she found a cute guy."

Ryoma snapped his head to look up at her.

"And?"

Sakuno laughed softly, watching how he reacted instantly. "She's asking permission to spend the summer break in Kyoto, with that boy."

Her husband scowled. She bent down and kissed the corner of his mouth.

"Don't worry, she'll be staying with my dad… and Yukio."

Yukio, that big, huge, goliath of a dog?

Ryoma hated that mutt. If he thought that Karupin was an old brat, the dog was a devil in disguise. It acted so sweet in front of Sakuno, but it would tire him out when she would turn her back.

But as cheeky as the dog was, it was reliable. He had to give Yukio that.

With an inaudible curse, Ryoma relented. "Fine."

Sakuno rewarded him by moving closer to him, bringing him back to where they had stopped. She lowered her head and kissed him fully on the lips, and ran her hands along his strong arms. Ryoma could feel the cool ring around her finger as she ran her hand up his shoulder, and he knew that she would always be his as she had promised him; and he would, in return, always be hers.

It still bewildered him how she affected his life so much.

He had battled the most important match in his life, but in the end, he lost. But that didn't mind him too much, because Sakuno was on the winning side. He couldn't ask for a better way to lose in a match.

-THE END-

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**A/N: Wow, I actually did finish this fic! How awesome am I? Hehehe. Please make me happy and tell me what you think. Maybe I need to change rating? Also, I would like to thank my wonderful readers, and also those who have painstakingly waited for this story to end and thank you very much to your encouragements. Thank you a bunch to those who put this story in the favourites and alerts, and also thank you very very much for listing me as one of your favourite authors. I really appreciate that. ^-^**

**Special thanks to:**

**Mae- **

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**And for those who supported this fic, no matter how OOC Ryoma & Sakuno seemed to be. Hope you have a good life waiting ahead of you, and may god bless y'all.**

**P/S: Sorry for the smut lovers, I couldn't muster enough courage to post an explicit chapter. But I hope you still enjoyed this fic.**

**Till then, hugs and kisses! **


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